Pasture Poultry
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EmailFebruary 29, 2024
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The presentation will focus on small-scale broiler chicken and turkey production on pastures using chicken tractors. Pasture management, manure management, and mortality disposal will be key areas of discussion.
The 2024 MI Ag Ideas to Grow With conference was held virtually, February 19-March 1, 2024. This two-week program encompasses many aspects of the agricultural industry and offers a full array of educational sessions for farmers and homeowners interested in food production and other agricultural endeavors. While there is no cost to participate, attendees must register to receive the necessary zoom links. Registrants can attend as many sessions as they would like and are also able to jump around between tracks. RUP and CCA credits will be offered for several of the sessions. More information can be found at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/miagideas/
Video Transcript
Good evening and welcome to the Michigan Ag Ideas to Grow with Virtual Conference. My name is Kable Thurlow and I am a regional beef and statewide grazing educator on the Animal Ag team at Michigan State University Extension. I am pleased to welcome you to this evening's session on pasture poultry. Today we will hear from Sarah Fronczak and Michelle Sweeten, Extension educators with MSU, Sarah and Michelle. The floor is yours. All right. My name is Michelle Sweeten. I am from the eastern upper peninsula. I cover forage and livestock over most of the upper peninsula. In the northern lower. Today, I'm going to talk to you about small scale broilers and turkeys. It's something that I've done for several years myself and we have a lot of fun with it with my family. I'll just talk a little bit about our experience. We started in 2016, we co raised ten layers and 40 Red Rangers. Starting in May, we built a heavy duty salton style tractor that you can see there in the bottom. We tend to save lots of money and we made homemade waters with nipples and cups. We brooded in an old water tank in the barn. I did start those hens for a few weeks before that in the basement. That is not something I recommend. I'm pretty tolerant of smells, but it was too much for me and there was only ten of those layers. We butchered the first group of broilers at 11 weeks. We had some experienced friends that helped us. And then we had a borrowed plucker so that made it easier. We stored them in the freezer with heat shrink poultry bags . For me, one of the biggest things doing that was that we had a big learning curve for me, how to cut up those chickens, and how to use them whole. Because I was used to just buying breast or individual pieces from the grocery store. Um, there's lots of Youtube videos and I still referred to those time to time just to refresh myself. Currently, we sold that heavy tractor. It just was too much, and the one time I tried to move it with my four wheeler actually ran over a bird and broke its neck. Thank goodness. It was close to butchering time. So I was able to still use it, but it was also hard to get into. I had to send the kids in to get the chickens out. We designed this lighter one that you see here in the bottom. We have wheels on it, but they're not useful. I can still move it by myself, the kids can if I really push them to do that. We raise usually about 40 broilers, usually Red Rangers or Freedom Rangers, whatever I can get. Sometimes I'll order with a friend and they have a preference. I do not start them in May anymore just because of our UP weather. I like to get them out on the pasture earlier. You can see these little guys up here still don't have their feathers. Will bring them in and out depending on the weather, before they're fully feathered. Um, if I wait till June, then they're a little bit better ready to do that. Typically, the weather cooperates a little easier. Also, one thing with having this taller chicken tractor, we were able to raise turkeys. We did three turkeys in that tractor in 2021. They finished really good. The first three turkeys were just these white broad breasted, and they were huge. Last year we decided to take a year off. Broilers did some heritage Turkeys. We did some blue slates. They did not finish quite as well, but we were tired of them. By Thanksgiving we went ahead and butchered them anyway. But that tractor has worked really well for turkeys as well. Whereas the other style tractor wouldn't have done that. Those first hens we only had for about two years and we gave up on them. I do have a daughter who's interested in it. We're talking about doing some egg mobile out in the pasture just to get that extra, get eggs and have them out in the field after our cattle, we're going to continue to raise our broilers instead of butchering ourselves just because of time. And we have some new butchers in the area, we have somebody butcher those for us. Everything's for our personal use. I gave up on those cheap trying to save money with the feeders, you can see I use a top water and a regular feeder and that makes life a lot easier just to have things that are going to stay together, especially with the water, it doesn't leak all over the place and everything. When you're planning for your broilers or your turkeys. The big question I think everybody asked us, what breed do you want a heritage breed or do you want to improve breed Cornish cross? They will finish in six to eight weeks. I raised them when I was a kid for four H. They get very big, you don't want to take them much longer than that. Sometimes they'll have leg problems. It depends on what they're designed to do. Some do better in pasture situations, don't I started doing this for my family, have not raised them since I was a kid. Unfortunately, the one time I did try to raise them, they didn't end up being Cornish Cross, they ended up being layers. That didn't go well at all. The Freedom Rangers, I feel, are a good in the middle of the road. They're not a heritage breed necessarily, but they finish nice. I've never had any leg problems with them. They really like the pasture and getting out there. They're going to take ten to 11 weeks to get to that four to six pound range. Um, heritage breeds, sometimes these can be more of a dual purpose and people like that idea. Plymouth Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, New Hampshire. You can find lots and lots of different breeds out there. For turkeys, the first turkeys we did were the broad breasted, white, and those are going to be effectively like the Cornish cross chickens. They do get to 18 to 22 pounds in four months. My first three, I think we had two of them over 25 pounds, which makes it a little interesting to cook them. Lots of heritage breeds, and it's going to vary how they finish and how they do. The ones up in the top right corner are actually blue slate turkeys. Those are the ones we did last year. Beautiful birds. They did really well for us. They just didn't finish as nice in the time. I would have liked them too. First question, and the first thing you need to plan for is, how are you going to brood your chickens? It needs to be draft free, but still protect them from predators. They still need some fresh air. You see here I've got a water tank with a wire frame over the top of it. They need some heat source. Chicks are very sensitive to, especially those first few days, how much heat they need. As they start to feather up, you can start backing off how warm it is. Turkeys are similar, the biggest thing, there's a lot of ways to determine how much. I don't always follow temperatures as much as what will be recommended in some of the publications. I just watch the chicks for the gauge their comfort if they're crowding together underneath the heat so they're cold, moving away from the heat source and sleeping on the opposite end. Then I can start turning that lamp off more. You'd like to have everything set up before your chicks arrive and have them adjusted to the proper temperature. If you're ordering them online, make sure you know when and where you're going to pick them up. You're ordering options. Our tractor supply and other farm stores often sell them, local feeds stores online. Local breeders, I've tend to buy mine online though. The Blue Slate turkeys did come from a local breeder. What equipment do you need? Basically, you need your feeder in water and a heat source. A chicken, do you want to build it or? They're pretty pricey to buy, but the ones I've seen are really nice and make it very easy to move your chickens around. How are you going to process them? Are you going to do it yourself? Is there somebody locally you want to pay? At what age do you want them to process? That's going to make a difference of what breed you decide on. Are you going to have them processed by the whole or by the I've only had them processed by the piece one time and the processor didn't do it quite how I would have done it. We just typically leave them whole and then I'll process them as I need them. A four pound chicken is going to be approximately four servings. That gives you an idea of how many chickens you might need. My family is six. We typically go through about 20 or 25 chickens a year. How are you going to store these chickens? Do you have enough freezer space? I really recommend the heat shrink bags. It's another step when you're processing them, but they're super easy to use and directions, and there's a lot of places online to buy those. And they store very nicely. The other option is plastic wrap and freezer paper, which is a little difficult sometimes to wrap around your bird when it's being processed. For a small four pound bird, you're going to want about 20 tenths of a square foot of freezer space. If you had 35 birds, that would be about seven cubic feet of freezer space. Chickens don't stack nicely as say hamburgers. But keep that in mind too. I'm not going to get into selling birds. I don't sell mine. I just do it for myself. But if you're considering this is a really good resource and has a nice schematic that lays out what you need to do for so many birds. MDARD takes care of a lot of this. If you have questions, we can try to get those answered later. Some ideas for your chicken tractors. This one up here on the top left is a friend and they use those for both layers and broilers. They're very long, but you can see they have boards on the bottom and a pole string. Those are a little hard to get into sometimes if you don't have little people to go in and catch the chickens, but they do move around the center, one is what I've ended up with. We do have it covered completely with a tarp and a piece of metal. The one on the bottom left is actually designed for a garden. This particular farm actually rotates the chickens around the garden every year. But it's the length of their garden, but it's very lightweight. If you have wind, you've got to worry about that. The bottom right one is the salatin style that we had. I can tell you that it never blew away. What cost do you want to have? Think about what size of wire all these things are going to affect. How many chickens do you want to have in it? The salatin one. If you look up online, I think they say they can fit 80. I always found that by the time my 40 get up to about nine weeks that they are crowded. Maybe it's okay for them, but I like to give them a little more space. I start with 40 birds and typically will be down to 35, 38. You do have to account for some loss. Here's some space ideas with your broilers are 1-3 weeks old, you want them to have 2 " of feeder space and about half a square foot per floor space per chick. It doesn't have to be exactly that as they get older. And thinking about your chicken tractor, when they're four to eight weeks old or four to 12 weeks old, depending on when you're going to finish them. You want 1.5 square foot per bird. The University Maine has some really good ideas for turkeys. You can see that they have just a little bit bigger feeder recommendations. They also have a recommendation, you could probably go with the lower water recommendation for broilers feed. For broilers for the first six weeks, you want to feed them a 22 to 23% protein starter type feed, and then 68 weeks you can change them over to a little lower protein. Usually that's a little cheaper for those last finishing weeks, They I don't count on a lot from their grazing and that's just bonus for me. There you can see Turkeys. This is why pasture raised turkeys are really expensive. They expect them to eat about 116 pounds of feed per bird. And feed can be really expensive because they do have a really high, you see, a 28% starter for them. I found that too. That's one reason I don't raise too many turkeys, just a few. For us, it's been interesting. One thing I will tell you from personal experience, be cautious if you're going to try to use some leftover feed from your pigs or something else. If that protein is not high enough, they will start being cannibals and start picking at each other. I only had that happen once we had some beef flavor and that helped fix that, but it's best to avoid. Thinking about your time line with your broilers. I did not get one of these for the turkeys, but you want to have them in that brooder for one to two weeks. It really just depends on temperature. By the time, if the temperatures are nice, I start moving them outside during the day and then move them back. But I have kids that can help with that. Week three, move them to the chicken tractor they recommend with the heat lamp installed. I've never done that because I don't have a good spot. I don't want to run that many extension cords. They seem to do okay. But I think moving them back to the heat lamp at night when we need to. As they grow, you're going to move the tractor more. You can tell by as the grass gets patted down or around the feeder in the water, they're going to have manure, and Sarah is going to talk more about that. You want to move at minimum every two to three days. By the time they're five weeks old, they need to be moved every day, both for their health and for the forage health that they by week six, again, you're going to move them daily. Your corners cross might be finished by then. For week 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, you're going to start moving them twice a day would be very ideal. It's going to depend if you have a bigger tractor with less birds can juggle that a little bit. I would encourage you to be flexible, um, because temperature stress, that's all going to affect how and when they finish. Make sure if you're planning on somebody else butchering for you or you're scheduling to rent some equipment to do that. Do that before you order birds because once they get to a certain weight, they don't do real well. Think about your tractor location. You can see here I used them and my horse passed a little bit. It did help. The horses still are hard on that and that's their dry lo I knew it was a lower fertility area. That's what we did two years ago, I believe it was. I do recommend you rotate each year. I like to put mine either in my horse fence or my cattle fence because we have lots of predators here in the UP. Having that extra electric fence slows down a few of them. Make sure that you have water and feed close by. Some people will actually plant forages. There's different forages that are available to do that. Just make sure you're checking your fertility before you plant it and give it six to eight weeks of growth before you put the chickens on it. Finally, your location, you can see this pasture bumpy in places, probably should have been smoothed out before put the horse pasture there, But the biggest problems I've had with chickens is they don't necessarily go out the sides. They go under the bottom where there's a hole or something, especially when they're small. We're carrying pieces of firewood and shoving them in there, or trying to reset the tractors so that, um, nothing can get in and they can't get out. If you talk to my friend Amy, she says you can grow grass on a rock if you pass your chickens on it. So, if you have a new garden spot, that's going to be a great place to put your chickens for a little while. Mainly have fun and enjoy. My kids, especially when they were younger, really enjoyed the chickens. Like I said, my one daughter, she's 15 now, she's wanting to get some hens again. We had a lot of fun planning chickens and playing with chickens and eating chickens. They get to see the whole life cycle. That's been fun for all of us. I have a slide here with a lot of the resources I used. There's a lo out there for you. I've just tried to compile a little bit and share with you my experiences. It looks like we have a couple questions. Do you want me answer those now or would you like to go Sarah, why don't you answer questions while I bring up my presentations? That sound good? Yeah. All right. All right. Nathan bundled his questions all together. I'll try to break them up. He's running two batches of 150 each of Cornish cross feeding, 24% starter, 20% grower. Is there any concern about adding a scratch grade of cracked corn and white wheat of 20% to their diet? Addition lysine and other amino acids supplemented as needed. It looks like you're adding that to what they're already getting. I guess I wouldn't worry about it too much, just start slow and do it. Maybe when they're the protein needs do decrease as they get older. He also wanted to know and Sarah jump in, if you know the answers to these, if there's any benefits to probiotic supplements range five to 15% mortality which the bulk come during the three to five weeks after introduction to pasture. That seems like really high. Yeah. I don't know anything about probiotics but that mortality seems really high. I don't know where you're at. I wonder if they have enough heat. That would be my first thing to look at. I'd also wonder what breed you're using. Some of them are a little bit more hardy than others. He is using cross Cornish cross. The I did really well with my Cornish crosses when I had them as layers. They had some problems with like bumble foot and things like that, like foot diseases, because they would get wet and then there'd be problems. But for the most part I was doing our Cornish crosses do like to be coddled. I don't know, Maybe switching to something that's a little bit more. Yeah. I guess one thing I didn't talk about is come when they get shipped, I do make sure I give them some Alcl like supplements and we played around with some apple cider vinegar in their water. But that's my mortality is usually in that first week. So something to consider. Then his last question is there. Michelle, Before you move on, just a quick comment on maybe we can go back to the first question. And I don't know at what point in time they're bringing in the crack corn and the white wheat. But if they're bringing in 20% of the, in addition to the feed that they're feeding, the 24% starter, there's a reason it's 24% starter. If you dilute that with the addition of cracked corn and wheat to the tune of 20% of their diet, you could be creating issues there. Mm hm. But potentially with mortality. Yeah. You want to wait until until they're older? Yeah, I agree. All right. So his last question is resource for Dart certified facilities for poultry processing. I'll include a link in the chat here while Sarah is talking on that. Can anybody expand on the exemption one classification of on farm processing? I think that resource that you showed that Erica wrote with Jeannine has that in there. That's what yeah. Yeah. You can grab that link and make sure the answer is in there and then send him that. I'm pretty sure that's where it's at, yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah. Do you have any more questions? Just go ahead and keep putting them in the Q and A. When I get done with my section, I'll answer my questions. And you have more stuff for Michelle. She'll answer hers too. We're here to the end. I'm Sarah Fronczak. I'm an environmental management educator. I'm going to be doing a presentation about what comes out the back side of your yummy chickens. We're going to go over manure production, the nutrients in that man manure storage options and manure application. What is the daily maneuver production of ten laying hens? Michelle, you got an idea how many pounds of poop does ten laying hens weigh? Oh my goodness. I had some really big hens when I had them, but then I had some tiny ones too. So one to two pounds. All right. For ten laying hens, 3.3 pounds a day. And that can add up, right? So like if you have manure production of ten laying hens in six months, you're going to end up with 3.3 pounds per day times six months. That's 300 pounds of manure. If your kids are shoveling, that they're probably going to complain about it, which is even more to shovel. You just want to think about what you're going to be doing with that manure. Because even if you have animals in chicken tractors and you're, if you have laying hens, you're going to bring them inside in the winter. And you're still going to have to have something to do with, with the manure. So when we think about manure accumulation and outside pens and lots, in this idea, when you have them out on pasture, how do we think about them in those lots? Well, we suggest that you have a grassy area around the pen or the area that you're going to be pasturing, something that you're not putting them on some area that's free of manure and stays clean. You want to keep your clean water clean. That means that you make sure that if you have areas where water pools or where water flows through, that you avoid putting those animals in that area. Small lots are easier to manage than bigger lots. A lot of times, if there is a way for you to break that up and think about it differently, maybe that's what you want to do. If you have to actually clean some of the manure or the area, then you want to have a plan to manage that is easy for you. You know, I think about things like if I have a mobility problem, right, and I want to be able to manage my arthritis or something like that, but still keep animals 90 to make sure that I think about that before I put those animals out in that area. In the case of chickens, we don't really use paved lots for chickens, but we might use is like a hard dirt area. We might have them on like a porch or something that we're able to scrape with shovel or something and collect that out on pastures, we might consider thinking like this instead of just like moving that tractor wherever we feel like we want to concentrate on moving those tractors in a uniform way. We're actually getting the manure spread out all through the pasture versus like whatever looks good that day. Make sure you have that plan. Manure has a lot of different components and the average nutrients and head man for 300 pounds of head manure, that six months of head manure is about two or 5.25 pounds of nitrogen and six pounds of phosphorus and three pounds of potassium. The other thing that's unique about chicken manure versus say, horse manure or even beef manure is that it doesn't actually have very much water in it. It's 70% solid and about 30% water. That is a lot of manure in just one place that isn't diluted by some other liquid. It doesn't have a ton of organic material in it. You just want to remember that areas with chicken manure can be what we call really hot and can damage pasture if the animals are left in that place too long and going back to Michelle's recommendation for removing them, especially when they're older twice a day. Why do we really care about nutrient runoff? Will many waterways in Michigan actually flow into the Great Lakes? Primary concern about manure runoff is really phosphorus loading and dissolved oxygen levels as well as increase in biological oxygen demand or BOD that can cause some issues. Phosphorus and these other things are naturally occurring elements. They are the limiting factor for aquatic plant growth. That means that in a healthy aquatic ecosystem that it's like a natural plant food, but that plant food is present in very small amounts. Phosphorus is that limiting nutrient in our freshwater ecosystems like the Great Lakes. When excess phosphorus enters that system, it can quickly cause the overgrowth of algae communities that put stress on aquatic systems. Fish and other aquatic critters really need a certain level of dissolved oxygen in the water to breathe. And so what happens is that during the day, the aquatic plants and algae undergrow lots of photosynthesis, right, with the light. And they generate dissolved oxygen and they fill up the water. But the problem is, as at night, those same plants undergo respiration, the opposite of photosynthesis, right? And they breathe in that oxygen and they take it up and it drops the o in the water. And that's how we get fish kills. So when we have too much nuisance, plant or algal overgrowth, that's when we end up with this oxygen depletion, creating problems. We also have issues with toxic algae blooming and creating drinking water issues. Keeping our water clean is one of the big things that we can do in the Great Lakes region to really help out a lot of the natural resources and a lot of these issues that affect us, both with our drinking water but also with our recreational spaces. You probably understand why we would like to keep manure in a storage facility. It's where we can keep the manure from running off. And it can be in a limited space. Right? A storage facility should keep manure from washing away, it should keep it from leaching nutrients into the ground. Really, the type of this storage facility is a three sided concrete holding area with a concrete floor. A lot of times it has a roof on it to prevent rainwater from getting in. Sometimes we'll see these as large metal tanks. Dairy farms, it's really common to see manure storages as earthen or concrete pits. I think in a case like this, it would be that whole three sided concrete area is probably the way you want to go. Let's see, I think I have a picture of one. Here's an example of one that's at a horse farm. You can see that these are timber walls with a concrete pad for dry stacking. Had three walls with an impervialh surface. Then you'd want to have drainage go someplace. If it's open and it doesn't have a roof, then that drainage needs to go into a vegetated filter strip. I suggest walls have poured concrete. Cinder block is great. I've seen a lot of those big modular blocks work really well as a stacking facility. Wood could also be an option, although it does break down really quickly With manure contact, you want to make sure that you anchor those walls below the frost line to prevent runoff. You really want to think about it as like a poor, better, best if you put your manure storage facility or your stacking or stockpiling facility on the top of the hill and it gets rain on it, we're going to lose nutrients through runoff down the hill, right? And we're going to get that algal overgrowth and those fish kills that we have a problem with better would be a storage facility that is in a three walled area. All the rainwater is going to be kept inside that storage facility. Best would be to have that storage facility with a roof on it so we don't even get rain contact and we don't have to deal with that extra water. I see a lot of confusion out on farms. The difference between manure storages or dry stacking and stock stockpiling is this is temporary storage. It's meant to be a way of staging for manure spreading. But we know that stockpiling happens, we have to get enough of it ready before we can take a load or something like that. So there's just some key things that you want to keep in mind. You need to try to keep those nutrients from leaching into the soil or groundwater. One of the ways to do that is make sure that you know where the groundwater level is, right? Don't stockpile manure in the lowest point in your farmstead, right? Because that's where you already know that water is coming up and pooling. So that would be a terrible place to stockpile. You want to keep that stockpile away from surface waters and out of floodplains. You have to rotate the location on the ground, so you're not going to stockpile in the same place all the time. And you also need to allow three years of vegetation before re using the stacking site. This is not a permanent location. You could compost your manure. Composting has some benefits. It reduces the volume of that compost by half. It can decrease odor. It kills the weed seeds that might be present in the manure. It kills diseases because of the high temperatures of the compost. And it also can stabilize nutrients. If you're interested in getting more information about composting, you can contact our new composting educator, Eliza Hensel. This is her E mail down here, Ciba. Second to snap. That if you want to grab it, Eliza would be happy to answer your questions about any composting that you want to do. When we think about composting, you want to also think about basic carbon and nitrogen ratios. Thinking about the brown versus green materials that you're looking for. You're looking to keep it in that 20 to 25 to 30. That range will keep your compost cooking If you exceed that by adding lots of soda, for example, or wood chips like bedding, you're going to have to add back green material to get your compost into a more balanced, more ideal recipe. You also need to turn manure piles. I see a lot of people who tell me they have compost piles on their farms. What they really have is a pile of age manure. It's not compost or compost piles need to be turned. They have to have oxygen in them. They age really quickly and nicely when that's done. But three year old manure in a pile on your far compost. I added a little bit on methods of carcass disposal because I get lots of questions about this. I realized that there are a lot of links on here. There are many rules about how bodies of dead animals are disposed of. And I know that a lot of us do what's maybe easiest in our own situations and we don't really think about it. But I would ask you to maybe take some time and read the bodies of dead animals rule that's available at this link. The state law tells us where we're allowed to vary, how often in the records that we have to keep. Let's look at that for a little bit. This slide was about composting. The rules also talk about composting and different ways you can compost carcasses. A carcass is not the same as composting kitchen scraps. It does take a little bit more skill and reading up on how to do that. According to some of these regulations, I would really suggest this carcass composting, this is really about cattle, but it would be really helpful with chicken carcasses too. I think the other thing to consider is that if you're separating your feathers out from your body parts, that you can compost the body parts. And maybe the feathers get land filled because they take a lot longer to break down in the compost all burial you bury on your property. The sites can't have contact with surface water or groundwater. They have to be 200 feet from wells. You can have common graves, but you're only allowed so many animal units in each grave. Again, I think this is a place where you really visit that state law and you see what's applicable to you and your operation and you follow those rules. Having a map, just grab a paper map of your farmstead and mark the burial sites and where you have Those is actually really helpful in case you ever have to answer for this thing. Another thing that you can do is landfill any of those body parts. You would just contact the landfill ahead of time and arrange with them what you're going to bring them. When we think about manure and compost spreading, there's lots of benefits to that because it's a low cost fertilizer source. But there are some considerations you have to make when you plan to spread things like slope and tiled drange in the fields. We sometimes, the weather can be really crazy. We have seasonal conditions like wet, muddy fields, maybe we have snow on the field. There's a frozen field. Depending on the saturation in the field. All those things can affect how we manure and when we spread manu, You also want to keep your soil tests up to date when you're spreading manure. So you know how much fertilizer, how much manure needs to go on that field. You should know what your manure nutrients are. You can use book values, but you could also send your manure out for testing. Depending on how big your operation is. You want to consider your crop nutrient uptake if you're putting manure onto pastures that pasture still has a crop nutrient uptake, like Michelle mentioned, these animals onto the pasture has really changed the health of her forage in pastures. We know that they're adding that value, but understanding what that is can really save us money to some other recommendations. Keep records, record. Keeping on farm isn't the most exciting job, but it's an essential job when you spread manure, When you put those chicken tractors out, keeping records of where and when and how long that they were there. That can really help you in the future. You never know what you need to know until you need to know it. Keeping good records is a way for you to look back and be like, oh yeah, that's what I need to know right now. Right? Another thing you want to really think of, because a lot of times these smaller poultry operations are closer to neighbors, is that manure can be, poultry manure in particular can be really stinky when it's highly humid or wet outside. It's important to consider that odor when it comes to your manure. You want to be a good neighbor and keep those neighbor relationships as healthy as possible when you're moving manure around, when you're hauling manure, try to do those on like cooler days is usually more helpful. Avoid holidays when you're going to do smelly things. If your neighbor's kid is graduating and they're having a graduation party, maybe that's not the data slaughter on farm. I don't know. You just want to think about those things and be a good neighbor. MSU is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer and all of our programs are open to all. We're happy to take questions about anything you guys have for us. One of the resources I really didn't talk about that might be useful is we have a small farm manure management planning tool. If you're on a farm that has multiple different species of animals, you need to think about like, oh, I have a horse and six goats and 100 chickens or something. That math can get complicated. So that's also available on the MSU website. You can Google my name and MSU and it'll be in my documents. I would love to raise turkeys in town, but I live in Coldwater. We are allowed four chickens. And I said does it just mean you can only see four chickens at a time? Could I have more chickens and just let them out four at a time? No. And Sarah, that's really important and I tend to forget that living where I do make sure you know your local zoning before you just start bringing chickens home or turkeys. I have a friend who's allowed hens but not roosters Yeah. Because of noise ordinances, right? Yeah. I mean, even like HOAs and subdivisions, they might not be within like, a municipality with zoning ordinances, but there might be rules because those are private contracts too. Yeah. Well, this lady's on ten acres in the middle of nowhere in the UP and she still has that ordinance. Exactly. I do think we can eliminate a lot of potential issues though by following your advice, Sarah. Just be a good neighbor. Yeah, I think I would get called out on a lot less complaints if people were just good neighbors. I'll stack your manure on your property line. That's a bad idea. That's not where it goes. Good point, Sarah and Michelle, thank you for your time this evening. We greatly appreciate you taking family time or away from your family time to present with us this evening, and we look forward to seeing you at the next session. This concludes this evening's session on pasture poultry. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your evening.