Perdue Farms plans to expand the number of chickens raised on pasture, the company announced during its 6th Annual Perdue Farms Animal Care Summit.
“Studies show that pasture-raised poultry has less fat and saturated fat than conventionally raised chicken, 50% more Vitamin A, nearly triple the amount of Omega 3 and a host of higher micronutrients,” said Ryan Perdue, Vice President and General Manager of Perdue Farms’ Pasture Business.
“From an environmental perspective, moving the chickens to fresh pasture every day returns important benefits to the land including increasing soil organic matter, sequestering atmospheric carbon into the soil, and improving the soil’s water-holding capacity.”
With the scaled-up pasture program, chicks will be moved to fresh pasture each day once they reach two weeks of age. They will live in floorless, solar-powered mobile coops that provide the birds the benefits of living on fresh pasture, while still protecting them from predators and severe weather.
A pasture-raised management style can pose several health and welfare challenges to broiler production, including losses to predators, poor growth performance, increased mortality and a general lack of control of the birds’ environment.
The mobile coops will also allow for consistent and even distribution of fertilization, increasing product nutrient density and yielding significant regenerative agriculture outcomes.
The move will make Perdue Farms the “only large-scale producer to guarantee that poultry products with a ‘pasture-raised’ label have spent the majority of their lives on pasture,” according to a press release from the company.
In 2020, Perdue announced plans to give at least 25% of its birds’ access to the outdoors, resulting in the addition of pop-hole doors and pastures to more than 800 houses.
Perdue Farms, headquartered in Salisbury, Maryland, is a fourth-generation company. It is the nation’s fifth largest broiler producer and the eighth largest turkey producer, according to the WATTPoultry.com Top Companies Database. Perdue Farms is also involved in animal feed and pig production.
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