Filling The Automatic Feedlines

When it comes to our automated feedline systems one of the most common questions I get is regarding how we fill them up. While their are several ways the farms using our systems fill their bins our own method is pretty simple and inexpensive. We had an old Gehl grinder mixer sitting around the farm that was last used in the 90's by my father and grandfather. It had been worn out then and had been dutifully parked in the corner of an old barn and just let sat for nearly 30 years when I laid eyes on it.  It would die if I tried to grind feed with it, but we get all our feed ground to our specs and delivered to large permanent bins. I don't need this old machine to grind I just need it to tranfer the allready ground feed. So I pulled the grinding plates on it and just use the mix funtion with the boom arm.  It's nothing fancy with is manual crank cables to adjust the boom arm but it is simple, inexpensive and most importantly - it works.  A few times we have gotten small batches of feed in tote sacks and we have just lifted the back up from the bottom (sitting on a pallet) with forks and slowly split the side to dump the feed in the bin.  I know a few other farms use old grain carts or feed trucks to fill them - really anything with an old boom arm will do the trick.  It's amazing how much time it saves! Feeding broilers and hens used to take nearly half of every day now we fill bins once a week. It has been a game changer for our farm and the farms that have implemented it as well! Michael put it pretty well when he said..... " We've been using the PastureTek automatic feed lines for a year now, and few innovations have had this much impact on our farm. We haven’t lifted a 5-gallon bucket in over twelve months. Feeding 3,000 hens now takes me just one hour a week—freeing up my time to grow our farm instead of repeating the same task over and over. This system has made our egg production feel truly sustainable. I can't imagine raising birds without it. "--Michael Gutschenritter - Three Brothers Farm

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Roosts and Nest Box Setup In The Best Chicken Hoop!

The Best Chicken Hoop works great for laying hens but we always get the question "How do you set up roosts and nesting boxes?"The answer is simple and there are actually several ways we have done it. None of which require setting up a grid of rails 1 ft off the ground like a high school football high knee experiment haha! The first setup and the one I prefer is to hang the nest boxes in the center of the hoop and then to use small sections of pipe or c channel to create a half " V" roost coming off of the side of the hoop.  To hang the boxes, we make a wooden frame out of 2x4s (the picture shows metal which we have since replaced) and hang it with cable to each arch (which is easily able to support the weight). This frame makes mounting the boxes easy and allows the bottom of the frame to support the bottom of the box. As an added bonus with this system the hanging nest boxes in the center automatically level so if you are running on uneven ground (like us) you don't have to worry about your eggs bunching in the roll out boxes. This method is also very compatible with our 5.0 automated feed lines and is how we have all of our hen hoops set up.  The second method is to hang the nest boxes down the side walls and put roost bars down the middle.  This photo came courtesy of Jonathan Denlinger one of our hen production partners. He has nice level ground so uneven boxes aren't a concern and he chose a side mount (he attached 2x4s to the side posts to mount against).  His roost bars, hung in the center, utilize a Christmas Tree pattern and are simply built out of 1.33" pipe.  Both methods work well and it is just a matter of preference on layout setup. The major point is that neither setup requires putting up with knee knocker bars and roost bars attached to them that create a checkerboard pattern impossible to walk through.  Don't torture yourself and your help that way! Keep it clean and open!

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Cut Your Chicken Catch Time In Half!

Over the last 8 years we have systematically implemented a variety of changes to our chicken catch protocol. Taken together they have dramatically reduced the unpleasantness of the job, the amount of extremely difficult physical labor and the total man hours involved (.48 minutes per bird to .21 minutes per bird).  I took a quick video to show how what it looks like. Check it out and see if you can cut your man hours to catch birds in half as well! The changes can be broken down into a few key principles of our refined chicken catch program.  First - Never Lift a full chicken crate. - Yes as impossible as that seems. Here me out.   We created special steel pallets that hold 12 chicken crates (two stacks of six) and can be moved with skid/tractor forks. The pallet has a special groove for attaching a heavy duty ratchet strap so the crates (empty or full) do not tip off and a raised edge so they do not slide off. This eliminated moving the chicken crates by hand.  We use a skid/tractor to set the steel pallet of crates right next to the birds we will be catching (more on that in a second) and then slide off the empty crates in stacks leaving only the bottom one on the pallet. We open those crates and then leg catch 5 birds at a time and place them in the empty crate (on the pallet) after two trips the crate is full and a new empty one is placed on top.  Second - Catch in the open air. A game changer for us was when we started moving the chicken houses off of the birds prior to catch. Its rather easy we simply pull them with someone inside keeping the birds from following. We surround the birds on three sides with portable migration fencing so they can't run away and then start setting the crate stacks right next to the birds on the open side of the fencing.  Now there are no feedlines or water lines in the way, no doorway posts to step over (or wait for other team members to get through. It is also way less dusty and much cooler. Oh and the distance we have to walk from picking up the birds to the empty crate pallet is only a few feet instead of half the length of a chicken coop.  Today a 5 man crew (one man is my 7&8 year old sons and another is a homeschool teen) catch 2100 birds from start to finish (including the tractor/skid loading on the trailer and strapping down. In an hour and a half.  Bird loading used to be dreaded - now its a quick streamlined part of farm operations. 

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The Best Chicken Hoop - An Overview

If you are ready to take your pasture poultry operation to the next level of enjoyability and profit - give us a call at 660-240-3238 - we would love to help! -David

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