Chickens at Iron Horse Farm

Our chickens have become their own celebrities on the farm, often greeting visitors and entertaining people with their dust baths. We raise and keep a hearty chicken called a Red Star. This chicken is a cross between a Rhode Island red and a White Rock. They are the gentlest, calmest chickens we have ever had. You will still see a few of the other breeds of chickens around the farm because we do not slaughter our chickens. They are allowed to live their lives out here in peace like our other animals. We free range our chickens for the best health and eggs they can deliver.

What is free range? Free-range poultry are, for practical purposes, unfenced, and are encouraged to spend most of their time outdoors, weather permitting. Free-range poultry are often not fenced at all. True free-range flocks are generally fed and watered outside. This encourages the birds to spend time outdoors and keeps the houses cleaner and drier. Here are Iron Horse Farm, we feed our chickens inside and outside. They are allowed to roam the property with no fencing to inhibit their natural calling to feed from the land. Though we are not organically certified, we feed no medications or hormones and use no pesticides on our chickens. Their eggs are the freshest and highest in Omega-3. As crazy as it sounds, we have trained our chickens to go into their coop at night so that they can be locked in to prevent predators from visiting them. They also lay their eggs in the coop or specially designated nest boxes on the property. No, they do not cross the road but they will stand right on the edge and only once did we have one cross the road about four years ago !

The eggs are collected twice a day, inspected, candled and placed into cartons and refrigerated. Because we collect frequently and keep the protective coating that the pullet places on the egg as she lays it, the eggs are good for at least 5 weeks, refrigerated. We feed corn and wheat to our chicken thus, the yolks are a deep yellow orange in color. Each pullet (commonly known as a hen) lays an egg about every 36 hours.