[permaculture] critique of pastured poultry

John Wages jwages at earthlink.net
Fri Aug 17 12:51:08 EDT 2007


The author has some very good points---which any observant, unbiased pastured poultry producer would be quick to recognize.  For example, not many people are really satisfied with the over-bred Cornish Cross.  Even when healthy, they are so big at 8-9 weeks that some of them can barely walk.  In my opinion, it's inhumane to breed an animal to have such extreme characteristics.  Again, most producers would agree---these points are continually discussed on pastured poultry listservs.  The problem is that the economics of growing traditional meat birds like White Rocks on a commercial scale is not comparable to that of the Cornish.  

The Salatin system is being improved.  Some folks have gone to hoop shelters for better ventilation in hot climates. As for predators, one strand of electric wire near the bottom of the unit suffices in raccoon-rich environments.  And, of course, it's easy enough to marry the pastured unit concept to a day-range system using electric-net fencing, which is the system we use.

Pastured poultry as it's currently practiced is not very permacultural and probably not sustainable in the post-cheap oil era.  But, anything more than a few hens is going to require outside inputs.  Perhaps the scale is the key to the problem.

But, I wholeheartedly disagree with the author's premise that pastured poultry is no better than confinement poultry systems.  Let's not destroy the good for the sake of the perfect.  Instead, let's improve the system or invent a better way.

John

John Wages
Tupelo, MS



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