Customer Reviews

Pastured Poultry Profits

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Salatin gives a step-by-step guide to his innovative method of raising meat chickens on pasture. This book has been used by hundreds of total novices to build up profitable small-farm broiler businesses. Salatin gives clear descriptions and makes lavish use of photographs to get his points across.

Pastured broilers taste better than store-bought, and the manure left behind by the pastured chickens has rejuvenated our pasture. The work is pleasant and isn't strenuous.

The hardest part is becoming proficient at butchering. Salatin lays out the method, but learning to do it quickly takes practice.

My wife studied this book, followed the instructions carefully, and has had three successful seasons of broiler production, and is looking forward to season #4.

Back yard growers or for a full time income, Saladin offers a unique approach that anyone can use to supplement income or just improve their diet with meat and eggs grown your way. Fascinating approach that makes poultry a cottage industry once again.

From a family who is proving it's still possible to make a good living on the American small farm.

Includes an index and excerpts from marketing newsletters. This workable production model covers every aspect of pasture-grazed chickens from building pens to processing the meat to how to talk to your customers.

Don't let the price throw you: what you are buying in this book is information - & valuable information at that for anyone serious about profitable alternatives in agriculture. There is also a 45 minute video available.

Details, details, details - this book is loaded with them, even the less than pleasant ones. Well written, logical, practical - an excellent book. It covers everything from getting the chicks to slaughtering the full grown birds and transferring them to the customer. I look forward to reading the rest of Joel's books about his unique style of farming, and hope for the day when this type of sustainable agriculture will become the norm.

Joel Salatin put into words what many of us are looking for...a cost effective way to "get back to nature" by farming, and providing healthy food options at the same time! His unique approach to ideas gets my imagination going. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in purchasing homegrown produce and meats, and anyone wanting to try their hand at raising them. Very practical.

Salatin gives a step-by-step guide to his innovative method of raising meat chickens on pasture. This book has been used by hundreds of total novices to build up profitable small-farm broiler businesses. Salatin gives clear descriptions and makes lavish use of photographs to get his points across.

Pastured broilers taste better than store-bought, and the manure left behind by the pastured chickens has rejuvenated our pasture. The work is pleasant and isn't strenuous.

The hardest part is becoming proficient at butchering. Salatin lays out the method, but learning to do it quickly takes practice.

My wife studied this book, followed the instructions carefully, and has had three successful seasons of broiler production, and is looking forward to season #4.

Joel Salatin has once agian proven that there is demand for high quality natural foods. And that the possibiltys are infinite, as limitless as your imagination. This book shows how to market, what kind of feed he uses, how not to live on the land but to live with the land. The more I read these books of his, the more bright the future seems. I'm 18 and my broilers and bees can't keep up with demand. There has never been a better opportunity. YOU CAN FARM! I am.

This book is essential for anyone considering poultry production as a business. Following this book will save time, stress, money and more. Nothing is smooth or perfect, but when using the experience the Salatin's have under their belt will greatly reduce the number of disasters. They took most of the oops's out of the equation.

This book covers in detail everything from why you should go this route, to what the "big hats" do and why that isnt the route to go. He explains in so much detail that I feel after reading this book you can safely gauge whether this business would work for you.

This book contains everything you need to begin today. It discusses the equipment, the government certification requirements, or more accurately what sort of operation doesn't have to deal with those restrictions. He discusses the chicken tractors, how to make them, how to not make them. Discusses seasonal processing, the actual nitty gritty about the processing and more, oh so much more.

I learned a great deal from this book, I was so impressed that I have his Salad Bar Beef on order. I believe this book represents a turn key business. A person purchases the rights to open a fast food chain, you spend 1 mil to have the right to use a clown to advertise your hamburger's and get to tap the experience of everyone that has opened that type of company... this book is no different. The purchase price of the book is a great value when you consider this is experience talking, this shows all of the details, this shows everything including the day to day life and how to find customers.

Sounds to me like the 1 million dollar turn key franchise. Except this is anything but a franchise, he points out family business and not empires are the way to go... and I have to agree with him. He shares this information because he would like to see a lot more operations like the one him and his family (and sometimes even customers) run. He notes that 100 operations in Virginia using the model he shares with us, would be about enough to support the state... yet he is the only one there (at the time of writing this book).

He would like to see these everywhere... people eating healthier, animals that are healthier, people being connected to where their food comes from. I can not say enough good about this book, personally I would like to go work for the author and his family for a couple weeks to learn hands on. I think this is a wealth of information and I await eagerly my Salad Bar Beef book hoping it opens my eyes to a better way to raise my beefalo.

OK - there's no doubt Joel is a very successful businessman - his Polyface Farms has been written up by Business Week (amongst others). This book gives you a great deal of insight into the pastured poultry "enterprise" part of his business and does a pretty good job introducing you to the concepts surrounding raising meat birds.
Pros
* easy read
* generally stays on topic in each section and the book is arranged logically
* offers lots of experiential stories to help the newcomer learn from his mistakes
* sprinkled with his own viewpoint of the world
Cons
* no "exacting" plans for building the pasture coops - rater verbal descriptions and poor black and white photos.
* lots of "factual opinions" with no references to source data (when he starts on the "big industry" for example) some of the science is sketch at best - again no references cited
* sprinkled with his own viewpoint of the world

The last item as both a pro and a con is what seems to polarize folks regarding Joel's books and techniques. The fact is - he's made a truly sustainable model out of farming - from both a land/resource management perspective, a "save the planet" perspective, and frankly - from a dollars and cents perspective.

Take it or leave it - his opinions about a lot of things shine through. If you can not agree with everything someone says - but take the meat of their points and work with them to learn - this is a fairly solid book (but expect to do some extra research if this is your first brush with poultry). If you are someone who is easily put off by strong opinions that may differ from your own - you should avoid this book - and go buy a book on self-esteem and negotiation.

Joel does a great job overall. I'd just like to see better illustrations, especially concerning pen construction and processing the birds. I highly recommend newbies take a look at Herrick Kimball's [...]. He does a great job illustrating how to process the birds, with great pictures. Also, the homemade plucker, which he designed, is great. It plucks 3 birds in about 10-15 seconds! Now that's good stuff! But I'd highly recommend Joel's book, in spite of the poor illustrations. Maybe he should have a talk with his publisher and put out a new edition. We just did our first 50 Cornish X Rocks, largely based on his methods and it went off without a hitch...well, I accidentally ran over a couple of birds with the pen as I moved it. So, those were a couple of "hitches", but some of the little buggers just didn't want to march to my well-sung Marine Corps marching songs! Imagine that! So, the little non-hackers went off to join Colonel Sanders in a better place. Maybe he can get them to march:)