The First-Year Egg Farmer

Molly DellaRoman manages a pasture-based flock of 300 laying hens alongside a sizable vegetable CSA, a farm stand, and a regular supply of farm visitors…and this is only year one.

Molly DellaRoman is the Farm Manager of Moose Hill Farm in Sharon, Massachusetts, located on land preserved as an open space and historical site by the Trustees of Reservations. When she was hired earlier this year, Molly was given the task of bringing agriculture back to this onetime dairy farm. She jumped in feet first, raising laying hens and growing CSA vegetables. Molly spoke with Small Farm Quarterlyabout the challenges and rewards of starting a pastured poultry enterprise on a diversified farm. This first-year egg farmer’s musings are relevant to aspiring or experienced, large or small-scale farmers alike.

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The Moose Hill eggmobile. Photo by Sam Anderson

SFQ: So far, do you feel more like a vegetable farmer with chickens or a chicken farmer with vegetables?
DellaRoman: Well, it can depend on the day. I think mostly I feel like a vegetable farmer with chickens. Honestly, some days the chickens should get more attention than they do, but we’re still working on that balance.

SFQ: Can you say a little bit about how the chickens and veggies complement each other, or how you’re hoping they will complement each other?
DellaRoman: Right now, the chickens get leftover vegetable scraps, which is amazing for them. They absolutely love that. My hope is that the chickens will do work for us. There are some fields that we’re going to plow up this fall and put into vegetables next year, and I would really like to get the chickens on those fields before we plow and have them get the grass down, scratch it up, and fertilize it.

SFQ: You jumped right in this year with 300 plus layers. What would you tell someone who is thinking about doing that?
DellaRoman: The biggest flock I had worked with before was 100 hens, which didn’t feel all that overwhelming. But having run the numbers for 300 chickens, it makes me realize those hundred chickens probably weren’t adding much to the financial side of the farm. There is more work between 100 and 300, but your financial return increases more than the additional work you put into it. Still, 300 hens is probably too small. Honestly, if you’re going to do it, I think you should go big. If you’ve never worked with chickens at all, maybe you should have a small flock just to see if you even like doing it; but if you want to make it work as a business and you’re going to put in all that startup cost—which isn’t going to be very different between 100 or 300 or even 500 chickens—to offset those startup costs, I feel like you can really go for it.

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Moose Hill Farm chickens. Photo by Tom Kates

SFQ: What are some challenges you came across this year that you have already fixed?
DellaRoman: Well, using apple cider vinegar was an amazing fix for the health of the chickens. We put a cup and a half into each five gallons of the chickens’ water. When a lot of the birds got sick early on after a rainy week, I thought we were going to have to use antibiotics, which was going to be a big problem since we wouldn’t have been able to sell any of their eggs during that time. But we learned about the apple cider vinegar trick from Pat McNiff (of Pat’s Pastured, Rhode Island) and it worked really well, so we haven’t had to use antibiotics.

There were a few rookie mistakes we made, even just on egg collection…I was so focused on getting these birds in the spring, I didn’t really think enough about how we were going to handle all of the eggs. But there are things you can buy in the poultry catalogs that can help you, and those were definitely worth the money. At first I felt like I was buying in a lot of infrastructure, but you realize that it really is important to have egg collection baskets instead of five gallon buckets, and you really do need egg tray organizers in your fridge because you can’t always wash eggs right away, especially if you’re also vegetable farming. Now we have our system, and handling the flow of eggs is not a big deal.

SFQ: What are some of the challenges you’re still dealing with?
DellaRoman: Looking forward, I think a big challenge will be pasture management, working on what’s actually growing in the field. That was another one of those afterthoughts—I thought, “Here’s this field, it’s four acres, that’s plenty of space for the chickens.” But we could be maximizing what’s growing in that field to get them off grain even more and really make it useful for them to be out there eating that pasture. That’s brand new to me. I’ve taken care of lots of chickens before that were “pastured,” but they weren’t moving around a big field, they were mostly on dirt and eating mainly grain and some veggie scraps. Now I’d really like to learn how to make it work—whether it’s getting the chickens to eat new stuff or getting rid of invasive weeds in the field. That’s what I see as my big challenge for next year.

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Resting on the coop. Photo by Tom Kates

SFQ: Did you have a moment this year that you realized, “Wow, this is going OK?”
DellaRoman: We had an open house in April. We’d probably had the chickens for about a month at that point, and the chickens were on my mind all the time. It was like having 300 kids. But we invited the public that day, we turned off the fence and let the kids hold the chickens, we explained what we were doing…and things had felt kind of chaotic, but I realized, “We really do have a system in place.” We were already starting to sell eggs at that point, and it was the first farm product to come off of that farm in decades. After that first month I think we realized: We are actually in control. Because the chickens can run you. They can.

SFQ: What’s your favorite part of having chickens?
DellaRoman: Well, they’re endless entertainment. They really are goofy to watch. One of my favorite moments, though I curse the chickens every night having to lock them in, is that time when I’m the only one left on the farm. There was a night in early June when I was just drudging along, shutting all the doors, making sure the fence was turned on, and I saw that the whole chicken field was filled with fireflies. The last few straggler chickens were walking in, and I realized that the chickens are here, they’re part of this little ecosystem. And they have a pretty great life.

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Sam Anderson

Sam Anderson is the Livestock and Outreach Coordinator at New Entry Sustainable Farming Project in Lowell, Massachusetts.

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