How To Pasture Raise Chickens In Tractors | From Brooder To Freezer

A complete season overview of our journey raising pastured poultry, Joel Salatin style. You'll get to see our whole setup including the chick brooders, the mobile chicken tractors, how we move the tractors, how to butcher chickens and shrink wrap them in bags, as well as a look at some awesome poultry processing equipment such as the Featherman Equipment scalder, plucker, and cones.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:53 Chick brooders
4:24 Chickens in the tractors, feed, moving tractors
10:08 Getting the chickens out of the tractors for processing
13:31 Info & tips on the tractors
17:12 Featherman chicken processing equipment setup
21:55 Begin butchering chickens, scalder, plucker
27:26 Evisceration / how to butcher a chicken
30:34 How to clean a chicken gizzard
31:38 Shrink wrap and bagging chickens

Links below to some of the products we used and recommend for raising and processing chicken.

Book with all the designs including the chicken tractors, cut lists, building instructions - "Polyface Designs: A Comprehensive Construction Guide for Scalable Farming Infrastructure":

Want to support Rooted Deep Farm & Our Family?

You can shop on Amazon using our affiliate link. When you click on our affiliate links and shop for ANYTHING on Amazon (not just our recommendations) we receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

For those of you who generously choose to click on our links before you place your Amazon order, THANK YOU. You are financially supporting our channel and farm, and we are grateful for that blessing.

[judygoodson]

Well done on showing the process of how it goes from farm to table. No drama, no hype, just real life.

[barbarajames]

I learned this by accident. Chickens don't want to be wet. Take a sprayer tank (hand carry size 2 gallon) with you on moving day. When you get the birds up to the trailer, open the door, get behind them with the sprayer and spritz them with the sprayer, they will move away from you into the trailer on their own. I had to use this method to get birds out of a difficult access tractor design when they kept running back into the tractor.

[marvmitchinmarv]

Thank you for your hard work and for sharing the process. 🤠🐥

[JoeGraves]

Hello there. Just found your channel. I too have been raising these birds in an identical way. Smaller scale at 250 a year but we have 3 of your size tractors. I have a solution to the water problems that come with the plasson waters, if your interested. I was having to go fill that 5 gallon bucket 3 times a day near the end of their run. What I did was fill a 275 gallon IBC tote with water and raise it up a 6’ platform. Then I run a single hose to the leading chicken tractor. I split it off to the next tractor with a 25’ hose and so on daisy chained. The low pressure from gravity works perfectly. For 250 birds I only have to refill the tote 3 times in 6 weeks! Such a time and labor saver.

[patcolston]

Nice to see the kids helping and learning.

[daniellebeck]

This is my favorite of your videos! Very well done. I remember the day you filmed some of that. Great job editing my children s faces out. I enjoyed hearing A. Ask her question about the water temp though. Loved this day. Thanks again for the education. Our chicks are ordered for this year, we have two tractors, now all we need is the dolly. So excited! Best tasting birds in my life!

[jay-rus]

Thank you for the video. Appreciated your comments about life and death. There are those that cant accept the reality of where much of our food comes from. I do NOT like killing an animal of any kind, but I have and will to provide food for our families. I really think that those that eat meat should have some real hands on for where it comes from. You did a great job in being respectful of the process.

[MistressOP]

When you get to the last stop for the birds feed them in the trailer a couple of times for like a week or two depending on your pasture just make sure to pressure wash it on the day before you take them for real. They walk right in. No drama

[josephmcbeth]

Omg thank you for showing me how to unload from the tractor to the livestock trailer. We been using the livestock trailer to take them to the butcher to it's so nice.

[sbhajian]

Excellent video with good information on how to raise and process chickens. Thank you for sharing. Here in Armenia we have 5 chickens and 1 rooster, which provides us all the eggs our family can eat.

[peterking]

Thank you for sharing. Looking at getting into raising chickens in the near future. People like yourselves are amazing in sharing the process 👍👍👍

[ctreid]

I enjoyed watching Kraig process the chickens.

[Yorashy]

I've been around chickens for most of my life and didnt know about this gizzard cleaning technique

[blackamericanoutdoorsmanll]

Nice video, I’ve seen plenty as I been learning the last 2-3 years. Yours made since! A lot of good details in a very understanding way…

[marchwim]

Great presentation. Thank you for taking the time to do it!.

[OneHomestead]

Howdy friends. Just found y'all. We love raising our own meat chickens on our urban homestead. Keep up the amazing work your doing over there!

[orianaspiderowl]

Oh! It's LITERALLY a little friend!

[cafamily]

Straight forward and covered all the details. Thank you!!

[georgeparrault]

26:59 For time, and Convenience You Could fix a Hose, and Sprayer on a Spring back System, Like they Use in Commercial Dish washing, and Produce Sinks.

[tobywhitney]

Thanks for the video. We are in our 2nd year of pasture raised meat birds, but we’re thinking of trying to market our birds in the future. We believe in raising our own we know what they are eating and we get away from all the growth hormones and other things that they are feed to chickens that are grown in buildings.