We encourage and expect farmers to use this training to improve their current operations, regardless of your involvement in the Tree-Range® Chicken brand. It is this initiative that builds sufficient collective capacity in areas to initiate system-level conversations and engage the Tree-Range® Chicken brand in expanding nationally.

There is no limit to course access after your original purchase. As long as you are interested in the materials, you will have access to them within your profile.

Manual copies are only available for trainees as a pdf file which is able to be downloaded and printed at your own discretion.

A production unit is an area where broilers (or egg layers) are raised. One production unit hosts 1,500 broilers per flock and is comprised of a shelter, grain bin, water supply, two paddocks for chickens to roam, perennial cropping systems, feeders, and forages at the ground level.

A chicken is expected to produce at least $1 in the poultry production we teach. This covers the farm labor, and at wholesale generates at least 5% of the actual profit margin after all expenses are paid (farm labor, health insurance, retirement, etc). 

When we measure the additional monetary profitability of this system we have to take into account the combination of chicken sales with that of other goods produced on the farm, such as manure, elderberries, and hazelnuts, and any income generated through services and apprenticeships provided on the farm. Profitability can vary depending on how much farmers want to utilize to generate additional income. After all the farm's goods and services are included in the calculations a farmer will get a better sense of their final net profit margins.

Our paddocks include hazelnut and elderberry bushes for the understory and oak, basswood, hickory nuts, and sugar maple trees for the overstory. As the system develops we continue to explore what hazelnuts and elderberries have to offer as a food source, from drying and roasting hazelnuts to making elderberry syrup and tea.

One production unit needs at least 1.5 acres in addition to a 1,600 square foot coop. It is up to you how many production units you will want to deploy, just add up the acreage. We don’t recommend farmers set up more than 8 broiler production units per farm.

We currently only use Freedom Rangers, which is a slow-growth breed. We are also constantly searching for breeds that meet meat and quality of life standards for the poultry production units.

We protect our chickens from aerial predators and also provide cool ground and shade to relax the chickens by planting overstory and understory perennial forest species. For ground-level predators, we build and carefully maintain a perimeter fence, and ensure that all chickens are in the nighttime shelter before dusk. When a predator issue arises it is normally possible to identify it as there are not many ways predators can penetrate the system unnoticed.

When a chicken gets sick it is given natural treatments that have proven successful in recovering flocks from rapidly advancing cases of coccidiosis with minimal losses and no need for pharmaceuticals. We reserve the right, however, to use antibiotics if a situation is too severe but in the history of this system, this has not been necessary.

The protocol of natural medicinal compounds is based on ancestral medicines and methods. The goal has always been to keep chickens healthy so we don’t have to treat sick ones at all. The system delivers such a high level of animal welfare that there have only been a handful of sick chickens in the 13 years the system has been operating.

A chicken's daily diet consists of regular ground-up feed, forages grown in the paddocks, and a sprouted grain mix used as a food supplement and dispersed throughout the paddocks.

While chickens do not eat mice, they will eat bugs present in their coop and paddock.