Rural Heritage October/November 2025

Pastured Egg Production HPD 2025 Seminar

When a chicken eats feed, it goes into the craw where the gizzard “chews” it. Use the appropriate size grit made from granite, not oyster shells. A chicken will eat and water and then lay her egg a couple of hours later. Chickens love to graze, especially scratching through animal manure. In that, they’re like dung beetles. When you put chickens in a pasture, you want to hit it and then move on. They’ll denude a pasture if they’re left there too long. Comfort is a very important consideration for pastured poultry. Chickens don’t do well in heat or direct sunlight. In cold weather these hoop houses are dry and out of the wind. Below 20 degrees, the chickens will stop laying, so add heat at that temperature. The metal reinforced “roof” protects the birds from hawks. He moves the hoop buildings every Monday and Thursday. Electrified feather netting that’s 48 inches high protects the birds from ground predators when they’re in the fields, forests or orchards. He doesn’t use dogs for protection because they might eat the chickens. He keeps one to two roosters in with every 100 chickens. Every 1 pound of feed that a chicken eats results in 2 pounds of manure. Grady has been farming with draft horses since 1990. He uses a moldboard plow and no synthetic fertilizers. He also keeps a small milk cow herd. He wants the birds to lay their eggs in community boxes, so he uses roll-out nest boxes where the eggs roll toward the back. They collect the eggs in baskets. When it comes to cleaning and packaging the eggs, use warm soapy water to clean them. The shells are semi-permeable, meaning that air goes through the shell. When stored under 45 degrees, with the blunt Grady has what he calls his “Egg Mobiles,” hoop buildings with opaque inner walls. If the temperature is 95 degrees or more, a misting system turns on.

by Mary Ann Sherman G rady Phelan traveled from Texas with his wife and seven homeschooled children to present a seminar on Pastured Egg Production. In addition to chickens, they have cattle and sheep. He got a BA in zoology and philosophy, worked for Joel Salatin and has been raising chickens for 17 years. He sells all his products to one restaurant and to families through a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Grady is on the board of the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association. For

this seminar, he focused on layers. He runs his chickens on fields, in forests and orchards and moves them around frequently. This makes for a healthier chickens and more nutritious eggs. There are three important things to keep in mind when you’re raising chickens: fresh flowing water, nutrition and comfort. He uses nipple drinkers for baby chicks and bell drinkers out in the field. There is pressurized water throughout the farm.

The feed is not vegetarian. He feeds meat, alfalfa, fish meal, vitamins and minerals, including calcium, and tries to match the life cycle of the bird. Fresh feed makes all the difference. He tries to feed layer mash that is 14 days old or less. Feed that is 30 days old loses a lot of its vitamins. Red Star chickens are a hybrid breed that is known for their tremendous egg-laying capabilities. They produce around 300 to 430 brown eggs a year and adapt well to free range environments. Hy-Line Brown is the world’s most balanced egg layer and produces more than 480 brown eggs in 100 weeks. These chickens begin laying with optimum egg size and show unrivaled feed efficiency. These two types of bird eat ¼ pound of feed a day. Ideally, feed half in the morning and half at night. Heritage birds consume 1/3 pound of feed a day and can get fat if you don’t watch them.

Grady Phelan

Rural Heritage

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