Floyd Johnson calls himself “The Chicken Man” for good reason. Pastured poultry raised on his Shoal Creek Farm in Raymond, Ill., feeds people hungry for good, wholesome food. And for Johnson, selling the tasty birds keeps his family farm running small in the face of the mega-farming trend.
“We’ve got great customers,” Johnson said. “They like our chickens and they want us to stay in business. We are giving them high-quality chickens. They ask me if we are charging enough – isn’t that great?”
Shoal Creek Farm broilers are a Cornish-White Rock cross Johnson referred to as the sumo wrestlers of the chicken world. “They’re big, double-breasted birds,” he said. His chickens arrive as one-day chicks via the U.S. Postal Service. They spend three weeks in a brooder house heated to a constant temperature of 95 degrees. When the teenage chicks go out in the wider world, Johnson is head chicken wrangler. “I take them camping,” Johnson said. “We roll them out to a grass pasture in a shelter, like a box on wheels, to protect them from hawks. They walk along under the box getting crickets and bugs and such as we go, then they pasture for the day. At night, I walk them back to the henhouse.” After four weeks on pasture, the chickens are ready for processing.
Johnson doesn’t use hormones or antibiotics. He uses organic feeds, no synthetics and no pesticides. The number of chickens he raises is no higher than the land will support. Shoal Creek poultry is not yet certified organic. Because Johnson is a certified organic farmer for other products, he holds the words “certified organic” in high regard. He won’t use cheat words like “almost” or “nearly organic” to describe his chickens. “Not yet,” he declared, “but soon.”
From June until November, Johnson travels to St. Louis in a refrigerated truck full of processed whole or cut-up chickens. This year, he will offer eggs as well, selling direct to customers. Johnson makes delivery arrangements when customers place orders. There is no charge for delivery, but to qualify for a stop, buyers must place a minimum order. (Interested parties can contact him at the farm by phone or fax at 217.229.3571.)
By December, Johnson hopes to finish building a heated chicken house for 300 laying hens. He won’t use treated lumber because he’s working towards organic certification. He may need to build a manure handling facility, and he may have to install a handicapped-accessible bathroom. (He’s hoping common sense prevails on that particular permit requirement.) He joked that investors are welcome.
“When I was growing up, nearly everybody had some connection to the farm. Maybe you would visit relatives on a farm or go out and pick up some fresh produce. Now some kids think food comes from grocery stores. On the farm, you’ve got to do things in season – plant on time, water, harvest. And it’s not when you feel like it; it’s nature working,” Johnson said.
While St. Louisans may not be able to drop everything and run to the nearest farm, Johnson can bring a little bit of the farm to the city this season with pastured poultry and fresh eggs.
City chickens David Stevenson won’t be eating any of his four pet chickens, but he hasn’t bought eggs much in the last three years. Stevenson lives in a quiet south St. Louis neighborhood where Ethel, a Plymouth Barred Rock hen, and her best friend, a Rhode Island Red named Lucy, share quarters with two Araucanas named Ricky and Baby. Stevenson built a cozy henhouse under his back porch for the brood. The house has cedar shavings on the floor, coops for each bird and two doors for access to a grassy, fenced backyard.
Stevenson buys his chicken feed from a granary in Fenton, but the chickens supplement the feed with grass and bugs in spring, summer and fall. “They’re pets. They come running when I call their names. I can even hold them,” he said. “When they die, they’ll be buried in the backyard.” He calls Ricky his “guard chicken” and said his wife keeps a broom just outside the door, by the fence, just in case Ricky mistakes her for an intruder.
Want to raise chickens in your yard? The St. Louis’ Animal Regulation Center will provide details – for starters, not more than four chickens per household and no roosters. Each municipality in the greater St. Louis area has its own regulations.
General information for raising healthy backyard flocks abounds on the Web. Two sites I liked were: www.cyndilou6.com and
www.pathtofreedom.com/pathproject/simpleliving/chickens.shtml.
This article appears in Jun 1-30, 2005.