DEVELOPMENT

Kirk and Tamara Gadzia have a small twoacre suburban homestead on the outskirts of Bernalillo, New Mexico, which includes irrigated pasture land watered from the local acequia (ditch) system. Over the years they have had a friend’s Highland cattle grazing on that pasture, but in 2020, they decided to partner with a local farmer grazing pastured chickens.

Tierra Sagrada is a small farm that usually sells vegetables through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) structure as well as at the local farmer’s market. Farmers Sage and Andrea wanted to add broilers to the mix they were offering at the farmer’s market. In the spring of 2020, they enlisted the help of Kirk, Tamara, and some other friends and family to help get them started on this enterprise. As part of this experiment, Tierra Sagrada and the Gadzias were able to raise, process and sell 140 chickens both in 2020 and then again in 2021.

The first step was to select a design for the chicken tractors and build them. They ended up choosing a walk-in design that was approximately 10 feet long by 6 feet wide and 6 feet high in the center. Sage, Kirk and Tamara built four tractors to be used on the Gadzia property and they were aptly named: Pot Pie, Marcella, Coq au Vin, and Tandoori. Sage built another two for his property. Each tractor holds 25 birds. Cornish crosses spend two weeks in a brooder and six weeks on pasture and over the two years, each bird consumed approximately 12.5 pounds of non-GMO and/or organic feed. The tractors were moved off the pasture one day per each irrigation cycle, which happened every two to three weeks.

The tractors were built to handle 25 fully grown birds and tall enough to walk in easily to make moving easy along with opportunity to use tractors for other enterprises like layers or ducks.

Having two types of pastures turned out to be

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