Back in May I wrote a post about what we feed our goats (here). Since the products that come off of our farm come from the milk that our goats supply we felt that it was important that our customers have an insight to the quality of our milk. The health of our animals is #1 to us so I thought our readers might also be interested in how the rest of the animals on The Freckled Farm are fed.
Llamas
Our llamas are strictly grass fed. They spend their days eating grass from the two pastures, munching on blackberry brambles and evergreen trees, and eating mountains of hay. During the winter we are literally stuffing the hay feeders all day. Because we do not give our llamas grain the quality of the hay is incredibly important. It is what keeps the weight on them, so the hay has to be nutrient rich. I have talked about the quality of our hay before. It’s something that we take very seriously. Most farmers that grow hay are small and only produce it for a small number of farms, so they do not want to go through the process and cost to be certified organic. The hay we use, however, is as close to organic as we can get! It’s chemical free and the farmer never uses drying agents. Good quality hay is one of the most important (and largest) purchases we make each year for our farm.
Chickens
Chickens eat everything. I’ve said it time and time again… chickens are not vegetarians like many big name chicken farmers would like you to believe. We feed our chickens a wide diet filled with proteins, veggies and greens, and grains. Our Chickens get a non-gmo grain and whatever food scraps that come out of our kitchen or garden. Our chickens also pick up lots of greens and bugs while they free range around the farm. You can tell if your chicken is getting a balanced diet by the color of their yolk, and our girls have bright orange yolks. I wrote an article about that as well (here).
On The Freckled Farm the health of our animals is incredibly important to us. We do everything we can to make sure all of our animals have a well-rounded, nutrient-rich diet.