Fox Forest Farm: Chicken Broilers

Written by Sonia R. Martinez.

Fox Farm chicks being moved to chicken tractor cage.The Fox Forest Farm, located on Kapehu Road in the Papa’aloa Homesteads area near Laupahoehoe in North Hilo, is run by Shane Fox with the help of wife Christie, three year old daughter Anna, and Honey Girl, the family dog. The 17 acre farm is a breeding home for organically raised broiler chickens, and in addition manages 7 cows, 1 ram, 19 ewes and a couple of hens for eggs for the family’s consumption.

Shane, whose day job is as a ranger on Mauna Kea, has been farming for about 10 years, but didn’t start the broiler chicken operation until about 7 years ago after reading the book Pastured Poultry Profit$ by Joel Salatin. Salatin's farm and methods have been featured in Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma and the documentary movies Fresh and Food, Inc.

The baby Cornish x Rock meat birds are ordered from the only hatchery in the state of Hawai’i, Asagi Hatchery in Oahu, and are flown to the Big Island within hours of being hatched. Shane explains that he could probably get the baby chicks cheaper from larger hatcheries on the mainland, but in trying to live a sustainable life in our islands, he prefers to spend the money as locally as possible.

15-day-old chicks.Because the chicks need protection from drafts, cold wet weather, and predators, they spend the first 12–14 days safely inside a brooder in their greenhouse, rigged with electric light bulbs for heat. They are let out to pasture for a couple of hours a day during nice weather “under supervision”.

After a couple of weeks, the chicks are able to tolerate cooler temperatures. If the weather is good, they are put out into their pasture shelter as soon as possible so they can enjoy the benefits of what Shane calls a daily salad bar of grasses, legumes, weeds, bugs and other goodies they love to nibble on. Their main feed, Natural Nutrena Meatbird Complete, stays the same from start to finish during their growing process, which takes about 5 to 6 weeks.

The farm plans to raise a couple of batches of about 100 chicks this year and possibly expand to a few more batches next year.

Advertising is mostly by word of mouth and repeat customers. A few days after receiving the chicks, Shane will send a mailing to friends and to the members of the Big Island Self Sufficiency Yahoo! Group (BISS) and within a week, all futures on the batches are sold, including the livers, hearts, gizzards and feet.

The processing of the broilers is done at their location and all pre-sold chickens, innards and feet will be picked up by their clients on the same day. Clients bring their own coolers with ice, ready to pack and transport the broilers home.

The 4-6 lb pastured broilers sell for $4/lb. The livers, gizzards and hearts also sell for $4/lb. The feet sell for 4/$1.

Interview with Shane Fox of Fox Farm

HHFN: Are you certified organic?

FF: No, but we don’t use any chemical herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics or other drugs on our land or animals.

HHFN: Since you follow organic and/or sustainable methods, what fertilizers do you use?

FF: Homemade compost, chicken manure pellets, “steer manure” compost from BEI, Biochar, Dolomite and crushed coral from Kawaihae.

HHFN: Do you experiment with different growing techniques?

FF: We’re trying to create systems that are sustainable. For example, raising chickens on pasture fertilizes the grass, which our sheep and cows love to eat. The healthier the grass in our pastures, the healthier all our animals and we will be. Rather than using chemical fertilizers that kill the life in the soil, we’d rather bring in hormone-free feed for chickens. The chickens convert the feed into manure which fertilizes our pastures, which makes the grass grow better…

HHFN: What are your growing seasons?

FF: We usually raise broilers between May and October.

Fox Family.HHFN: Do you deliver?

FF: Not at the moment, but we’d like to develop “Buying Clubs” in different parts of the island. For example, if a group of customers in Kona would like to get together to agree to purchase 100 broilers, we will process the birds on the farm, bag and weigh the birds and then pack them on ice in coolers, and for a small transportation fee drive them over to a convenient place in Kona where customers can come to pick up their chickens. It seems better for the environment for us to drive one vehicle 75 miles over to Kona to drop off the birds, than for 25 families to have to all drive their vehicles half-way across the island to pick up chickens at our farm.

HHFN: Do you provide extras such as flowers, eggs, poultry, or meats?

FF: We try to encourage other like-minded alternative farmers to join us at our farm on broiler processing day to make their products available to our customers when they come to pick up their broilers. In the past we’ve had ranchers and farmers with grass fed beef, cheese and eggs come to sell their products to our broiler customers.

HHFN: Are you planning on expanding your produce line?

FF: Yes, we’d like to eventually offer, beef, lamb, and eggs to our customers.

HHFN: Does your farm experiment in growing crops not usually seen on this island?

FF: We’d like to start selling bamboo shoots.

HHFN: Are you looking for more members?

FF: Yes. More and more people are starting to realize that the type of food you eat is important for your own personal health and also the health of the planet we live on. Mass produced supermarket birds may be cheap to buy in the short run, but the cost you end up paying down the road for extra health care and the unknown costs to the environment where the birds are produced add up to make the factory farmed birds more expensive in the long run.

Fox Forest Farm

Shane, Christie and Anna Fox

Kapehu Rd – Papa’aloa Homesteads, North Hilo

P.O. Box 192 – Papa’aloa, HI 96780

808/938-5103

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.shaneshawaii.com

Sonia R. Martinez, the Hawai'i Homegrown Food Network regular farmers market reporter, is a cookbook author and freelance food writer for several publications in Hawai'i, including The Hamakua Times of Honoka’a. She is a contributing writer for Edible Hawaiian Islands Magazine and has her own food & garden blog at soniatasteshawaii.com

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