The Power of Poop

When it comes to day to day operations with raising your meat birds there are a few things worth diving into at different stages of their life. 

As a chick, you’re going to be setting up the brooder and maintaining their feed/water. We will go over this in more detail next week with our guest homesteader! 

One of the most valuable things that meat birds produce (well, chickens in general, just more abundantly with meat birds) is POOP!

Their poop is an INCREDIBLE fertilizer. If you don’t believe me, ask any homesteader who uses a chicken tractor 😉 the luscious green grass that grows from the areas those chickens were pulled over is unlike any other. 

For this reason, we raise our meat birds in our off season pasture to help amend the soil and restore organic matter to it so that our grass will grow nutrient dense and our cows can eat it the following season! 

The chickens live their best lives and poop all over the place and each day we move them. Once they get bigger, we move them two to three times per day which allows us to cover a lot more ground with natural fertilizer. It’s a win win. 

In this photo you can clearly see the difference between the green, healthy fertilized grass that the chicken tractor was on and the grass where there were no chickens.

I highly recommend chicken tractors for your meat birds. If you don’t have one or if you are looking for another solution, you could also use solar powered poultry net that can be moved daily to provide fresh pasture. The only negative I see here would be in regards to predators - so make sure your chickens have protection and covered areas for safety.