Raising Rare Farm Animals & Polyface Farm Internships | Q&A with Joel Salatin

[@LisaRucker-x8k]

Congratulations on your new job as head of the USDA.

[@debbiekelly6835]

So grateful and excited about your USDA appointment! Exciting times!🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@Carolynfoodforest355]

Congratulations on becoming an advisor to the USDA. I'm looking forward to the positive changes in the way farms will be more sustainable. That is so important. Hopefully all of our food will be pesticide free.

[@SDCISHERE]

🙏🙏🙏🙏 As a small farmer this was the best news thank you

[@thatguychris5654]

Yaas !!!

[@theemmanuelswife]

Joel, CONGRATULATIONS! We are beyond thrilled for you. Best regards from the DoubleD's homestead/mini-farm in East Tennessee. That's David & Diane. ;)

[@lazurnayafarm5737]

Happy to hear on your new appointment at USDA. May god help you crushing through all those layers after layers of nonsense Regulation. I'll be watching!

[@robr307]

Also, the heritage Turkeys are quite trainable, if hand raised they're more compliant and competent than the chickens, generally they can be trusted to free range, and return as long as you have predator precautions in place. Happy to trade you some custom bred royal palms if you stable past our farm

[@AbigailPoirier]

Yeah, our turkeys are smarter and easier to train than chickens. Friendlier, too. They would probably catch on to the PVC enclosure fast and work beautifully

[@HARRYBEES-c9u]

I love the info that you give and share your real life experience.

[@chilidillo]

Congratulations on our new administration! Throw a huge PolyFace bird at Big Ag !!!

[@twc9000]

Congratulations on being an advisor to the USDA. Please make every decision based on whether it fits into the 27 enumerated powers listed in the Constitution. After a short time, there should be nothing left of the USDA. Thanks, Joel.

[@memiseburslem2559]

congrats! yea!

[@robr307]

Been enjoying your content for awhile now and homesteading a couple hours east of ya. I raise turkeys, quail, peafowl, and chickens. I've had great luck raising quail with the turkeys as chick's, while they're little, the turkeys learn not to predate on them, and will help keep predators off. The quail do need more stationary homes, but you can make 4 or 5 and rotate between the houses like fields. I've not had to use antibiotics with this method, and when the quail do get out, they tend to stick with the larger animals that they recognize, until they can be grabbed. The peafowl can be a little difficult though.

[@robr307]

It's also important to hatch the quail 2 weeks before the turkeys

[@thatguychris5654]

The most exotic I'll do is guinea hens for the tick control. I'm around 50 miles or so from you Joel, doing my organic thing on 2 acres. Hope I can visit you one day. Do you have any rabbits? That's the next thing I'm diving into in 2025.

[@adiada5013]

CONGRATULATION !!! :)

[@jcobe-qi6mv]

very accurate.... as a producer who raises guineas and peafowl. in both cases we have good luck marketing them b/c other folks have a hard time raising them consistently, in our area. So my advice (if you get into exotic fowl) pick a type and get good at it, then you'll have a chance of being profitable at it. In the case of my farm, guineas and peafowl are both quite profitable ventures, but they aren't easy, and they require special accommodations...

[@magalimauriello6540]

Bonjour svp traduction en Français merci

[@tonyritter4919]

Yeah. Way off on the gamebirds there. The species you mention are more what I'd consider alternative livestock than exotic, and you're not wrong on some of the points. I'm staunchly anti medicated feed on game birds. it's more cost effective to cull. They do need the bigger stationary pens with rest periods and buried edges. The dimensions weren't near big enough for pheasant either. Bobwhite on the other hand are one of my favorite species ever worked with and I couldn't ever raise enough to saturate a market. Raising a few as a PART of an operation is a really enjoyable sideline. There's for sure some cross over but in my mind an exotic is something that's so expensive you wouldn't dare eat it. Some of the quail and pheasant species, being on the more common end and getting into preservation breeding. But with "exotic" you have to hunt nation wide for a buyer, and the community can be eccentric, if not flat nuts, and nobody really knows how to care for them. It still has a lot of the principles of agriculture so if you really want to talk about farming like a lunatic, they make you look totally sane. I've got a 20 some year background in work study and learning the ins and outs of all these communities and gamebirds and farm diversity were my primary point of interest.

[@wolverines747]

Hey Joel, can you be a steward at any age? Like, what if you’re close to 30 and interested in exploring your own regenerative farm? Thanks from NorCal!

[@Alle8ia]

Saw you on the highwire. Blessings.

[@jhosk]

Can't you clip wings?

[@dantheman9135]

ThankQ

[@DeA-ln1vu]

I remember seeing you in a documentary about 13 years ago, I think it was called Food Nation. The next day we drove south on a trip and saw all those metal chicken houses and drove past Tyson. A worker from Tyson was crossing the street, probably to the little cabin across the street. He was dark skinned, but ghostly looking, no life to him. Probably drained of his life force from the work (animal abuse) there.

[@dwighthires3163]

Your logo includes a fish. I have never seen any fish videos. Do you raise fish in the small ponds you have on the farm?

[@rachelswanson8797]

My son raises quail as a meat source they can raise in town.

[@GrandmomZoo]

😊

[@stevecaswell]

My wife had become aware of you and shared the information that you were going to be working with the Trump administration. We are homesteaders but we are not professional. My wife knows a lot about growing food but we don't have much land. We have less than a quarter acre to grow food on. Probably about 1/8 of an acre at the most.

[@Barcxde-]

Did I hear you say Virginia???????? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

[@Alle8ia]

Won’t ever eat quail.