Broken Arrow Farm
Pastured Poultry in Northeast Wyoming
By Kendra Paulton Paul and Bailey Eitel of Newcastle, Wyoming are no strangers to hard work, ingenuity and agricultural opportunity. Their passion for farm-to-table wholesome food products has driven the genesis of their poultry operation, Broken Arrow Farm, where they raise and harvest over 800 fryer chickens for their local community each year.
Paul grew up on a family ranch in northwest Nebraska, where his family raised Simmental cattle and grew wheat and alfalfa. His father was always looking for ways to diversify and eventually started an elk operation near Crawford, Nebraska. Paul developed his love for poultry during his 10 years as an active 4-H competitor. “I showed everything from hedgehogs to market steers,” he laughed. Chickens were his main focus, however, and he even hatched out a lot of his chicks with an incubator.
Bailey also has her roots in agriculture through 4-H opportunities. “I grew up in town, but I was able to raise hogs and rabbits for 4-H,” she explained.
Degrees And Experience
Paul and Bailey both went to college for the same degree, Rangeland Management. Paul spent his collegiate years at Chadron State University and minored in ag-business; Bailey attended the University of Wyoming and put her focus in botany and forestry. Currently, Bailey serves as the range ecologist at Custer State Park in Custer County, South Dakota. Paul’s employment with the NRCS in Weston County, Wyoming, is what moved him westward from his post-collegiate home near Colome, South Dakota. His ranching heritage engrained a deep passion for locally produced, quality food, and so he continued to dabble in chickens alongside his day job, enjoying a small group of laying hens.
“I was dealing with a smaller acreage in Wyoming,” Paul explained. “If you diversify and branch out, there are a lot of opportunities.” The next spring, Paul ordered his first batch of fryer chicks, 30 Cornish Rocks, from Welp Hatchery. “It’s like taking a Simmental cow and crossing it with an Angus,” Paul explained when asked about growth hormones. “There’s nothing injected into them, it’s just genetics. It’s the way they are bred.” He also noted that he has tried other breeds of meat chickens, including Red Rangers, but they take longer to get to harvest size and the pin feathers are harder to remove.
“I processed [the first group of chickens] just for myself, and when people heard I had them, they started to ask about purchasing processed chickens from me,” Paul said. So, the next year, he took preorders and ended up ordering 200 chicks.
“The third year, I was over 400,” he said. “Now, we do around 800 fryers every year.”
Learning to Butcher Efficiently
Bailey’s and Paul’s paths crossed in a stroke of destiny when Bailey was invited by a mutual friend to “go help butcher a few chickens” in the summer of 2016. In 2018, the couple was married on Bailey’s family’s place north of Newcastle. Since then, the couple’s enterprise has grown from their main focus — chickens — to include two dairy cows, a group of meat rabbits, and turkeys.
The Eitels say that the diversification of their program as multiple benefits. “The cows will hit wherever the chickens were, due to the increase of nitrogen and extra in the grass from the chickens scratching up the ground and new growth coming,” Paul explained. Chickens also spread apart the cattle manure, naturally fertilizing the soil.
Using Hatcheries
The way the Eitels have sourced their chicks has evolved from the beginning as well. “When I bought my laying hens, I went through the feed store in town,” Paul said. “Then, I started dealing with the [Welp] hatchery directly.”
At one point, Welp Hatchery was out of the breed of meat chicken they wanted to order, which forced them to try a new one, Duncan Hatchery. Now, they split their chicken orders between the two companies. “If you buy a big order, the survival rate is not as good as when you do smaller orders,” Paul explained. “At the end of the day,” Paul said, “the choice in a hatchery comes down to the dollar and the customer service.”
“Duncan’s has a 48-hour replacement policy,” Bailey said. “Especially when you live in Wyoming and [the chickens] come from Iowa, two-day shipping is more like three-day shipping.”
Both hatcheries, the Eitels say, have had top-notch customer service and quality stock.
The Eitels take special care to attend to each chick individually as soon as they arrive. “We have everything in the brooder rooms set up a couple of days before the chicks are set to arrive, except for the water, which we add electrolytes to the morning of arrival,” Paul said. They dip each chick’s beak in the water as soon as they are unboxed and carefully observe in person and from afar via a camera system, to ensure that the temperature in brooder rooms is adequate.
Hens receive their chick grower ration from a local grain mill. As they grow, chicks are fed locally sourced grain such as wheat or oats. By the time they are on pasture, the bulk of the chicks’ feed is pasture.
Groups of chickens enjoy “tractor” runs eight feet long by four feet wide by two feet tall with shaded shelter and waterers. Tractors are moved daily to fresh ground, which Broken Arrow Farm admits is labor-intensive — but worth it.
“We also have a group of chickens in electric poultry netting,” Bailey added, “and that doesn’t have to be moved as often since it’s a larger area.” She also noted that those fryers tend to take closer to 11 to 12 weeks to mature instead of eight weeks like the chickens in the tractors.
When processing time comes around, the Eitels have a core group of friends and family who pitch in over the course of a weekend. Processed in an open-air station, they utilize automatic plucking machines and camaraderie to get the job done. “It’s kind of like a branding,” Paul laughed, “only with chickens.”
While federal standards mandate up to 1,000 poultry to be processed annually without specialized labeling, the Eitels have the ability to process up to 10,000 in accordance with their current facilities and practices. “But 800 is a pretty good number for us,” Paul said. “We may increase our turkey orders this year, but other than that we are meeting our demand right now.”
“Our goal,” Paul said, “is to enjoy the lifestyle we live while providing good, wholesome, quality food that is locally, naturally, raised.”
Originally published in the April/May 2020 issue of Backyard Poultry and regularly vetted for accuracy.
