We are very grateful to have been one of 87 farms chosen to receive a national grant award from Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) in acknowledgement of our commitment to humane farming. This grant will help Midwest Prime Farms expand and improve our pastured poultry operation.
We use mobile coops to house our broiler chickens and turkeys from Spring to Fall. The coops have an open bottom which allows for the poultry to forage for grass, bugs, worms, and seeds. We move these coops by hand every day onto fresh grass. The coops also allow for fresh air and sunshine all while keeping the poultry safe from predators. We surround our coops with electric fence netting. This provides an extra layer of protection from predators while allowing the poultry to free range during the day. We run the poultry out on pasture alongside our cattle. The electric fencing also keeps the cattle separated from the poultry. Believe it or not, the cows LOVE the birds!
We will be using the funds to purchase larger more efficient feed and water systems that will go in our mobile coops. This will allow us to feed and water once a day instead of twice like we are currently doing. We will also be purchasing more electric fence netting. This will allow us to fence in a larger area that we can do our daily coop move within. Currently we are able to move our coops twice inside the fenced area. With the new fencing we will be able to move our coops daily for a week before having to shift the fencing too.
Raising poultry the way that we do is very costly and labor intensive. This grant will allow us a little more time to focus on scaling our poultry operation which in turn will lower our cost of production and cost to consumer of our product. You can read more about our pastured poultry HERE.
A little bit more about FACT:
- This year FACT awarded 87 Fund-a-Farmer Grants to farms located in 34 different states and the District of Columbia
- Since 2012, FACT has awarded 608 grants totaling over $1,110,000 to farmers across 44 states
- You can read more about all of the 2023 grantees at: www.
- .org/resources/2023-funded-projects
More info on this grant can be found below.
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