Georgia leads in pastured poultry production

As far as the sentient life-to-serving size ratio goes, Gallus gallus domesticus gives more than any other species. About 95 percent of factory farmed animals in the United States, or about 8.8 billion, are chickens. Georgia is the largest producer in the U.S., with an annual production of 1.4 billion broilers. But Georgia, with its fair climate and ample farmland, is also the nation's top producer of pastured chicken, according to Garces' estimate. Among the state's pastured chicken producers are Heritage Farm of Bowdon, Grassroots Farms of Tantall and White Oak Pastures of Bluffton.

So for the second year Garces is overseeing Pastured Poultry Week (June 10-16), which she calls "a celebration of humane and sustainably produced pasture-raised chicken." To participate, simply dine in one of the 70 participating restaurants, which have all agreed to swap out factory farmed chicken for pastured chicken. There will be no "Portlandia" obsessiveness, just plates of good food you can feel good about eating. The restaurants include Local Three, L'Thai Organic, Chicken and the Egg, and the Ansley Park restaurant named for chicken breeds, Bantam + Biddy.

Pastured chickens can reward the palate as well as the conscience. They generally have a more pronounced “chickeny” flavor due to their longer maturing and varied diets. Some can be tough or stringy: they do run around.

To understand the life of a pasture-raised chicken, I figured I needed to meet one. So I drove to Darby Farms about an hour east of the city in the town of Good Hope. Darby Farms supplies the terrific (and not at all stringy) chicken I've enjoyed many times at Cakes & Ale.

Farmer Daniel Dover met me by the re-purposed cotton wagons he uses for roosts for his 100 laying hens. The chickens — mostly Rhode Island Reds and Australorps — bounded in and out of the wagons and scurried through the tall grasses of a parcel of pasture enclosed in a ring of plastic fencing. The chickens get no antibiotics or dewormers; the chlorophyll from the grass boosts their immune systems.

The entire operation is designed to pack up and go. “We move them every five or six days,” says Dover. The chicken rotate through the pasture, feasting on grubs and grass seeds, and leaving behind just enough natural fertilizer to replenish the soil. “This kind of system can be taken anywhere around the world,” says Dover.

This 34-year-old former network engineer came to farming after making changes in his own diet. His decision to give up all processed foods, he believes, improved his mood, physical health and mental acuity. He began researching local food systems and felt that he needed to contribute to North Georgia’s.

Up a hill and behind his house are the enclosures for the meat birds — a thick-legged variety called Freedom Ranger. Like the laying hens, their enclosures move from spot to spot throughout the pasture. You can trace their path by the grass, which turns from brown to green. Dover says it eventually comes in greener than before after the chickens have passed over it. There seems to be a fair amount of chicken drama happening under and around each vaulted enclosure, with skirmishes and chases.

These 2,000 birds will live about 9-10 weeks, double the life span of a factory-farmed bird, which is bred to fatten quickly. Thanks to their diet (a mixture of local grain and whatever grass seed, grubs and worms they forage), their flesh holds 10 times the folic acid and exponentially higher levels of beta carotene.

With a Great Pyrenees guard dog named Lucey trailing behind us, Dover takes me to the deep-litter enclosures where he keeps the newly hatched chicks under a heat lamp after they arrive in overnight boxes from a breeding farm in Iowa. There is one little chick that is resting against the chicken wire, looking out. It reminds me of a kid peering out the back seat of a car window, or of the way my dog wedges her head between the bars of the patio railing to survey the yard. But I can’t really tell what’s going on in its little chicken eyes. It might just be stuck.

Dover reaches into the cage to cull the inevitable dead chicks, and finds three. “Some animals die on a farm,” he says, tossing the stiff little fuzzballs offhandedly into a pile. “And some are too weak to survive.”

He untangles the little chick I had been observing from the chicken wire and puts it alongside the others he’ll take to a compost pile. Its breathing is labored and it barely moves.

Just then Lucey starts barking at something and distracts Dover. Maybe it was the sudden sound. The little chick bolts up and makes a break for it, its spindly toothpick legs dart into the crowd milling around the water bowl. It may live to root in the grass.

This year, a number of New York City restaurants have joined in the Pastured Poultry Week promotion, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s celebrated ABC Kitchen. Despite the city’s prominence as a dining capital, supply of local pasture-raised chicken is scarce. Garces contacted more than 500 New York farms, but most were too modest in size to forge relationships with the larger restaurants. Still, they managed to supply small eateries wherever possible, and shipments of White Oak Pastures from Georgia saved the day for the big players. “That’s what this is all about,” says Garces, “forcing the market, finding out where the gaps are in the market, making those connections.”

Garces uses the term “pastured” rather than the more familiar “free range” because the latter is subject to greenwashing. “Chickens that are raised in the same long houses as factory chickens can be called ‘free range’ as long as there are “popholes” on the sides for them to walk through. But so often they’re in flat, open fields and the chickens won’t ever go outside. They’re terrified of aerial predators.”

At Darby Farms they dash about, happy to vacate their roosts into tall grass where there are worms to find.

To see the list of participating restaurants, go to www.ciwf.com/our-campaigns/pastured-poultry-week/