Our Animals

Pigs

Our pigs are fed exclusively Organic Hog Grower Feed from Cashton Organics, vegetable scraps, tasty pasture morsels, and a small amount of spent grain "mash" from Driftless Glen Distillery.  They spent their whole lives on quite large areas of pasture that in the matter of a couple weeks they have "tilled" up through rooting around. This works great to help us "break in" new ground or give a reset to an area with noxious weeds. As soon as it looks like they are getting close to having explored the entire top two feet of the soil in an are we move them around. 

Our 2022 pigs were Red Wattle Pigs

Our 2023 pigs were Hampshire Pigs

Chickens (Broilers)

Our broiler flocks are fed exclusively Cashton Organic No-Soy Feeds, veggie scraps, and tasty pasture morsels. They start in a homemade brooder setup and then by week two they move onto pasture in a fully protected hardware cloth mobile pen. We move them about every 1-2 days (if we only have a few in there it is sometimes longer) which makes sure they always have fresh pasture to peck around in.  Because of lots of past predation on our flocks and how these are the youngest, most vulnerable of our animals we don't allow them to roam wild the way our layer flock with roosters do.

Our 2023 broiler flock were all Cornish Cross

Chickens (Layers)

Our layer flocks are fed exclusively Cashton Organic No-Soy Layer Pellets, veggie scraps, and what they gather from the pasture. We have an older flock that is a mix of fun varieties, but are now past their laying prime and only sparingly contribute to our egg production. We now buy "point-of-lay" red sex-link hens. This means when we get them they are at an age where they are just about to start laying (~16 weeks). The sex-link breed, is actually a more broad term that refers to crosses of heritage breeds that, due to coloration at birth, are easier to sex, They all produce brown eggs. Our plan is to raise our red sex-link layer hens for two seasons. After that we have found egg laying production slides off, sometimes dramatically.