Free-Range Chicken

Thank You For Your Interest!

Due to overwhelming demand Olive Hill free-range chickens are now available only to CSA members. Check out our CSA page for more information on our CSA and to consider purchasing your 2011 share today!

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does “Heritage” Chicken Mean? And Why Do You Raise Them?

How do Chickens on Olive Hill Spend Their Lives? Are they Really Free-Range?

What do the Chickens on Olive Hill Eat?

Have More Questions We Didn’t Cover Here? Contact Us!

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What is a “Heritage” Chicken? And Why Do You Raise Them?

As proud American Livestock Breeds Conservancy members we’re particularly fond of their definition of a Heritage Chicken. In short, Heritage chickens are recognized by the American Poultry Association — and were before the mid-20th — they can mate naturally, have the ability to thrive in outdoor and pasture based production systems, and grow slowly giving their skeletal structure and organs time to develop prior to adding muscular mass that their otherwise juvenile bodies would not be able to support. But to fully understand why we raise Heritage Chickens — and why we think it’s significant we’d like to tell you what’s not a heritage chicken.

A specially developed animal has long been needed to meet the needs of conventional farming practices and the high consumer demand for rapid mass production of inexpensive chicken for supermarket sales. That animal is known as the Cornish Cross, a hybrid chicken with many generations of carefully selected breeding behind it that allows for extremely rapid growth, sparse feathering (for easier plucking) and the most efficient feed usage in poultry today.

Unfortunately, the same characteristics that make it so viable for the food industry are also the characteristics that make it an unsustainable option for small farms. The growth of the Cornish Cross is so rapid, in fact, that without extensive management their lives simply cannot be sustained beyond the early butchering age of 6-12 weeks. Likewise, the same genetic selection that has given us the Cornish Cross’ ample white breast meat also makes it all but impossible for the birds to breed naturally — and even if they could, because they are a hybrid they do not breed true, which means their offspring are not more of the same kind of bird, rather they can and do revert to the traits that were present generations back instead.

All of this means that the Cornish Cross and other hybrids of its kind are not only not sustainable for small farmers and backyard flocks, they require yearly purchases of birds from hatcheries that often do not share the ultimate goals and missions of farms like ours.

With this in mind, in early 2008 we laid plans to transform our meat flock into a 100% sustainable and Heritage breed based operation. Over the course of that year and the next we gathered information and experimented with processes that would enable us to do so without compromising the integrity and quality our customers are accustomed to and in 2010 we made the switch.

Our flock is now made up of several Heritage Chicken breeds including Black Australorp and Light Brahama from which we are able to produce both meat and eggs.

How Do The Chickens on Olive Hill Spend Their Lives? Are They Really Free-Range?

Recently, the labeling practices of the food companies in the U.S. have come under close-scrutiny in the media. While we think the continued education of consumers is a great thing, the shady labeling practices of corporate food companies do make it hard for small farmers like us to effectively communicate with our customers.

Please rest assured that when we say “Free-Range” we mean Free-Range. While, under federal regulation, “Free-Range Chicken” you find in the grocery store need only “have access to the outside” in order to be labeled free-range we set a much higher standard for ourselves. Our chickens spend dawn to dusk unfenced on our property where they forage, scratch, dust-bathe and interact with one another and the other members of our farm family at will. They are confined only at night in order to protect them from the nighttime predators that love quality chicken as much as you do.

Where conventionally raised chickens you find in the supermarket may have lived in accommodations of less than 1 square foot per bird our flock is afforded the luxury of more than 1000 square foot per bird.

What Do The Chickens on Olive Hill Eat?

While free-ranging during the day our chickens actively forage for a natural diet of grasses, weeds, roots, grubs, and bugs. All grain-based feed we offer is locally milled by a small, family owned business here, entirely plant based and contains no animal by-products or preservatives.