Category Archives: Chickens

Meet the Alexanders.

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They operate Avery’s Branch Farms, a dairy, pork, and poultry operation in Amelia County. The Alexanders started their farm business about six years ago and moved to their current location in 2009. They are primarily milk producers who interact with local consumers via a cow shareholding system, but they also raise poultry and pigs in order to offer chicken, turkey, pork, and eggs for sale. The family has made it their goal to feed their milking herd a pasture-based diet and to build healthy soil that can sustain pasture plants. Tim, his wife Joy, and their children run the operation together.

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The Avery’s Branch milking herd is composed of about fifty head of Jerseys and crossbred animals. Why Jerseys? This breed does not produce the same volume of milk per day as the Holstein does, but Jersey milk tends to be high in butterfat and protein and is excellent for making cheese. Jersey cattle also perform well in the outdoor conditions on grazing operations and are widely used in many parts of the country. 100_0753 - Copy (1024x768)

The milking herd relies primarily on forages to meet their needs. The cows receive a small amount of grain to meet their remaining nutritional requirements because lactating animals naturally require a high-energy diet in order to produce milk.

Like any grazing operation, Avery’s Branch strives to manage their pastures in such a way that forage is available for the majority of the year. Any farmer who runs out of pasture by the winter or faces a slump during a hot summer must resort to feeding hay, which can become costly. To reduce the number of hay-feeding days per year on the farm, Tim utilizes a diverse mix of annual and perennial forages in his pasture. Some of his pasture consists of tall fescue and clover, both of which are cool-season grasses that thrive in fall and spring and can be “stockpiled,” or saved up in the fall for grazing during the winter. The clover also “fixes” nitrogen from the air and adds it back into the soil, making it available for plants to use.  Since cool-season grasses typically do not grow well during the hottest months, Tim plants warm-season annuals such as sudangrass, sorghum-sudangrass, and crabgrass, all of which thrive during the summer months when cool-season grasses have gone dormant. Keeping crabgrass as a desirable pasture plant may come as a surprise to people who despise seeing it in their lawns and gardens, but crabgrass is actually a higher-quality forage than many of its warm-season counterparts and contains about 15% crude protein and 60% total digestible energy when it is grown in fertile soil.  The Alexanders have also planted winter annuals like ryegrass and oats to help get through the coming months.

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Weeds, weather, and soil factors all play a role in the quality of the forages that are available to the cows. This year, wet weather has allowed cool-season forages like tall fescue to keep on growing all summer long. Weeds are also a concern on the farm, as they are for all producers, but the Alexanders combat them by clipping them to weaken them and rotating animals between pastures. Pasture rotation reduces the stress on desirable plants and allows them to recover quickly and choke out undesirable plants.

100_0786 (1024x768)The Alexanders have continued to grow their farm to further meet the needs of their customers and shareholders. Their willingness to try new practices and evaluate their successes and failures objectively has allowed them to take their farming operation from an idea to a real-life success.   

100_0756 - Copy (1024x768)Additional Resources for Readers:

Warm-Season Annual Grass For Summer Forage

Forage Establishment: Getting Off to a Good Start

Information about Direct Marketing for Farm Products

Avery’s Branch Farms Website

Meet the Hutchinson family.

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Their farm, Deer Run, is located in Amelia County. Like many producers in the area, Robert and his wife Ruth Ann raise beef cattle and chickens, but their operation is rather unique. They market their products directly to consumers in the area who prefer to eat grass-finished meat and eggs.Their cattle consume pasture and hay year-round, and the family sells their meats at local farmers’ markets and via an ordering system. Their broilers and layer hens are raised on pasture, resulting in chicken and free-range eggs for their customers.

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Raising animals this way requires its own set of management principles, and the family has spent considerable time learning and perfecting them. Grass-finished cattle must reach market weight on forages alone, whereas conventionally-raised cattle may eat both forages and grains. In order to help his animals reach market weight in a reasonable amount of time, Robert practices good pasture management to encourage the growth of high-quality forages. Tall fescue is common in Virginia and grows at the farm, but Robert has planted other grasses such as orchardgrass and bromegrass to improve some of his pastures. He has also mixed clover into his pastureland. Clover is a legume, just like alfalfa or lespedeza, and it contains higher levels of crude protein than most grasses. The added protein helps supplement what the grass may lack and helps maintain a steady rate of growth. Deer Run’s chicken flocks also enjoy it, and it benefits local populations of pollinators. Robert and Ruth Ann are also in the process of establishing more acres of silvopasture—pasture that contains both trees and forages. The trees serve as shade and are a harvestable crop in the future, and the grasses in between sustain the cattle below.  

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Like any farmer, Robert must provide for the needs of his plants, too. Pasture plants require varying amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium as well as a slew of micronutrients to support regrowth after grazing or cutting. Some of these nutrients are provided by decomposing plant tissue that eventually becomes reincorporated into the soil. Some are provided by manure from cattle and poultry. Robert takes a soil test each year to determine his pastures’ nutrient needs. To fill in the gaps, Robert uses composted chicken litter from the farm and turns it into fertilizer. His clover also does some of the work. Legumes, including clover, have nodules on their roots containing bacteria that are capable of “fixing” nitrogen from the air and putting it back into the soil so that plants can access it. Since nitrogen can be costly to apply, the savings offered by legume plantings are significant.

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Weeds are a challenge to all pasture managers because they compete with forages for nutrient resources and they reproduce rapidly by creating vast numbers of seeds. Deer Run Farm aims to prevent weeds by promoting desirable grasses. In other words, they rotate cattle between each of their grazed fields so that the plants are able to recover and outcompete weeds. They also reseed thin pastures and clip weeds, since some weeds eventually succumb to frequent cutting.

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Deer Run farm is full of relaxed cattle and chickens busy foraging away in their moveable outdoor pasture enclosures. The Hutchinson family is one of many families who have creatively found ways to have a hand in taking their product all the way from the farm to the table.

100_0690 - Copy 100_0695 - CopyAdditional Resources for Readers:

Controlled Grazing of Virginia’s Pastures

Forage Establishment: Getting Off to a Good Start

Deer Run Farm’s Homepage