What do Chickens Eat?

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March 13, 2024

Polyface Farm stands as a testament to sustainable agriculture, where the principles of ethical farming and environmental stewardship converge. We raise a variety of animals, both omnivores and herbivores, ensuring their well-being and the quality of their diet.

Among our fellow co-laborers in our stewardship are chickens, pigs, turkeys, rabbits, and cows, each with its own dietary needs. While chickens, pigs, and turkeys thrive on an omnivorous diet, rabbits and cows are natural herbivores. Even our omnivore herds and flocks, raised using nature’s template, require additional sustenance beyond grazing.

While historically these animals would have roamed for miles to gather necessary proteins, we can't do that. Our neighbors wouldn't approve, and our ecological development would be greatly diminished without gently guiding the animals where we need them and managing (stewarding) our property well. We cannot deprive our animals of the proteins they require just because we have manmade laws like property boundaries.

Instead, we provide locally milled whole-grain feed, ensuring our animals receive a balanced diet while minimizing our environmental footprint.

All our feeds are GMO-free. Our custom blend comprises whole roasted soybeans, corn, oats, a small amount of fish meal, and a Fertrell mineral mix, providing essential nutrients while excluding animal by-products, fillers, hormones, or antibiotics.

Our laying hens also receive calcium and lime mixed in for their shell quality.

We tailor the feed ratios and amounts to match the specific protein requirements of different animals, including pigs, turkeys, laying hens, broiler chickens, chicks, poults, and ducks. This personalized approach ensures optimal health and growth for each species under our care.

It's essential to note our use of whole roasted soybeans, distinct from traditional soy products. This is not soy. We don’t use soy. We use whole-roasted soybeans. The difference is equivalent to high fructose corn syrup versus corn on the cob.

In essence, we at Polyface exemplify a holistic approach to animal nutrition, where sustainability, ethical practices, and nutritional quality link by prioritizing the well-being of our animals and the integrity of our environment.

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Duplication

"How does this scale?" Whenever someone asks me that question, the underlying assumption is that production volume requires consolidation, concentration, and centralization. In other words, the only way to feed the world is to make bigger chicken houses in one place, bigger canneries in one place, bigger machines and bigger warehouses. I remember well being vilified by a Smithsonian historian at a food conference where he and I were both on a panel. When I dared to suggest bigger is not always better, he interrupted me and ranted for 10 minutes on why bigger is always better. "A bigger fort was always bigger than a smaller one. A bigger gun was always better than a smaller one." He went on and on about how historical accuracy and authenticity demands addiction to bigger. But biology is not forts and guns. It's not mechanical. Critters have an optimal size. As animal behaviorist guru Temple Grandin says, living things demand energy for three things: reproduction, growth, and immunological function. All three must be in balance. When anyone selects for only one of those traits, the other two suffer. That's why American dairy cows only have two lactations on average. When they milk as heavily as our one-trait genetic selection asks, they don't breed and have all sorts of sickness problems. Nature does not scale through concentration; it scales with duplication. If nature wants more oak, it doesn't make one big tree; it makes acorns. If nature wants more milk, it doesn't make a great big cow; it makes calves. If nature wants more tomatoes, it doesn't make a monster tomato plant; it makes a bunch of seeds that make more tomato plants. Nature scales with duplication. At Polyface, rather than having a chicken house big enough for 15,000 chickens, we have 170 little 120 square foot portable shelters holding 75 birds apiece and giving us cumulative capacity for 15,000. But they're spread out in modules, duplicated, to give us the production volume. We run pigs in groupings of 35-50. A Smithfield confinement facility might house 5,000 hogs in a bigger-than-football-field-sized facility. The stench is unbearable. By spreading these pigs out across the landscape in small groups we get the same scale without any of the ecological, immunological, or animal welfare dysfunction. This could even be said of farming in general. People see the massive corn, soybean, and alfalfa farms in the mid-west and wonder how we would possibly survive without those massive, single-species outfits. The fact is they aren't even producing food. Half the soybeans are exported to other countries; those markets are drying up rapidly with competition from other countries like Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Nearly half the corn goes to taxpayer-subsidized ethanol. The alfalfa goes to Japan and Saudi Arabia to feed racehorses. By and large, all that production isn't even food. The fact is we don't need to produce all those commodities and even if we needed it all for food, we could do it in a more spread out, diversified platform. America has 35 million acres in lawns. We have 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. All of this could be turned into duplicative production, like acorns for oak trees. My point is this: scale as commonly understood in modern American lexicon is completely anti-ecological. The real mechanism for scale is duplication. A more democratized production creating volume through multiplicative nodes is the way nature works. This is why farms like Polyface, with spread out infrastructure in repeated modules offers multiple advantages. Polyface can't feed the world by itself, and we have no desire to build an empire trying to. But thousands of Polyfaces can feed the world. Indeed, they're the only way to do it for the next 500 years. This is one reason why we invest heavily in germinating new young farmers. Our stewardship and apprenticeship programs are all about this kind of duplication. In fact, Aug. 21-22 we're hosting the Stockman Grass Farmer's Launching Young Farmers conference where we'll feature 8 of our graduates who were 20 years old, no money, no land, and at 40 are full-time farming without government subsidies. If you ever dreamed of bootstrapping a farming career, you should come. We still have room. It will be the most profound agricultural conference in America this year. Information is on our website on the education tab. For most of you, the fact that you keep us in business to duplicate production and the farmers who will carry these principles forward, indicates your heart investing in an authentic food and farming model. Thank you for making it all possible.

What do Chickens Eat?

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Duplication

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