Chickens
As with all our livestock, we grow out meat chickens seasonally and on pasture. Pasture-raised poultry provides a much higher quality of life for the birds and contributes to improved soil health. With daily pasture moves, the forage is allowed time to absorb nutrients, grow deep roots, and capture sunlight to regrow stronger and healthier.
We grow two types of meat birds, which thrive in an outdoor environment. We grow both the Freedom Ranger and White Ranger which have been bred for their slow growth, vigorous health, and adaptation to living outdoors on pasture. Their slower growth and vigor provide for a more flavorful and healthier bird. The Freedom Ranger chickens were initially developed in France to meet consumer demand for a delicious, tasty, well-muscled chicken with equal amounts of white and dark meat. They are excellent as a roasted whole bird with deep chicken flavor and crisp skin.
All our meat chickens arrive at our farm as baby chicks and are moved to pasture within three weeks, where they enjoy munching on fresh pasture and bugs and get plenty of fresh air.
Our birds are grown only during the season's peak to ensure maximum tastiness. When the weather in the northeast begins to warm in earnest, typically by late April, our birds are moved to pasture to live a healthy and comfortable life where they consume large amounts of growing forage. The bird’s consumption of green forage makes our bird’s taste and texture so amazing.
You are what you eat! Our chickens consume large amounts of forage, and combined with freshly milled organic grains, it really does yield a delicious chicken. This philosophy limits our production capacity and ensures our birds are always grown in a healthy environment, which benefits both the birds, the pastures, and your plate!
Our Chicken
Fresh chicken is available approximately twice a month, on weekends from late May through October. They are also available most of the time, frozen, in our Farm Store. We sell whole and 1/2 chickens, legs/thighs, backs, boneless breasts, split breast, and giblets.
We move our meat birds every day to ensure they have access to fresh, clean pasture and to help stimulate pasture regrowth.
Feed & Processing
Our birds require a high-quality balanced feed ration in order to meet their maximum tastiness. We pay great attention to the quality and maintenance of our pastures to ensure the birds are consuming as much green, healthy forage as possible. In large part, their consumption of clovers and grasses plays a big role in ensuring a flavorful bird. The pastures provide anywhere from 5-25% of the total nutritional needs of our birds with the rest of their diet provided by a certified O’ grain mixture of soybeans, corn, oats, wheat, vitamins, minerals, a mix of probiotics (lactobacillus acidophilus) and grit (granite bits which aid digestion).
We have worked hard over the years to find the freshest and highest quality feed ration available in New England. To this end we work closely with family-owned Green Mountain Feeds located in Vermont. Our feed is custom milled for us using Certified O’ grains including probiotics, flaxseed, and whole grains. No antibiotics, hormones, animal by-products, or synthetics of any kind pass the beaks of our birds! Our feed is Certified O’ which means no GMO-grown corn or soy!
All of our chickens (and turkeys, too) are processed at a USDA-inspected facilities in Rhode Island and New York. Each bird is hand-inspected for wholesomeness and quality and kept fresh for several days after processing then quickly frozen in our energy-efficient freezers.