Outdoor chickens stronger, healthier, small farmers say

By KELLY VANFRANKENHUYZEN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Poultry farmers increasingly raise chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese in environmentally greener and healthier habitats, according to the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association. “The concept is to provide good pastured poultry practices,” said Roy Ballard, a Purdue University Extension educator. Pastured poultry is raised in open fields rather than indoors. Corinne Carpenter, a small poultry farmer in Webberville, said, “As birds are raised outside, they are stronger and have less need to be medicated than birds indoors, which can be overcrowded and stressed.”

Carpenter, owner of Break O’Day Farm, raises both pastured and free range poultry. With pastured poultry, hens roam without fences, she said.