PolyFace Farm

Polyface Farm was a very interesting visit. Joel Salatin does not use any pesticides, herbicides, dewormers, or antibiotics. He has non-hybrid chickens that live in egg mobiles and follow his cows around to keep them from getting worms. The egg mobiles and cows are moved daily. He has 2 houses and 400 layers in each house. He claims that he can collect eggs from 50 chickens in the same time he can collect eggs from 800 chickens. He also is a self proclaimed "Lunatic".

He has 5 miles of water lines run to water the chickens in the egg mobiles as well as the hogs, and broilers in movable huts. The cow manure did not look healthy is was very green and slimy where it should have been brown and thicker. He feeds non-GMO feed to all of his animals but 15-20% of their feed comes from the pasture. During the winter he puts his layers, rabbits, and pigs in the hoop houses and then uses the bedding from that house to plant his vegetables in the summer. Joel Salatin claims that pink eye, black leg, pneumonia, mastitis, and milk fever are all genetic diseases (they are not in any way, shape or, form genetic)!!!!!!!! He says that out of his 1,000 cows (we maybe saw 25) he only has 2 cases of pink eye each year! He dogged Tyson, Purdue, and Pilgram's Pride chicken.

A cow day is the amount of food one cow will eat in a day. Most average 80 cow days per acre but he get 400 per acre and he has not planted or fertilized in 50 years (no way in hell this is possible). He has a total of 3000 chickens and the broilers are moved everyday. He also feeds his predators and believes that a grey owl will pick up a opossum to save his chickens. The only way to farm is with a "Portable Farm"  (here's where the self proclaimed name comes in real handy). Land value has increased tremendously over time and the land on his farm is worth $8,000 an acre. He only feeds hay 40 days a year where the average is 120. Horses and mules tore up the fields ruined the dirt and now his free range pigs are going to fix it. His death losses are 3-4% for the layers/ 1% for the cows and pigs/ and 6% for the broilers.

Every farmer is responsible for their own locality and we should not worry about the rest of the world, they can take care of themselves.

So this farm did nothing but make me mad and prove how many idiots there are in this world that believe his crap. There is nothing about this farm that I could take back home and it was a waste of money. There is no way he makes a profit off of his farm, maybe off of the farm tours though. Seeing people that wanted to have his autograph and shake his hand even fueled the fire more.