Pastured Laying Hens

Pastured Laying Hens is a comprehensive course focused on one of farming's most practical and dependable cash-flow enterprises: egg production. Drawing on more than 60 years of hands-on farming experience, Joel Salatin guides you step by step through establishing, managing, and growing a successful pastured egg operation.

You'll explore free-range, controlled-range, and secure production systems, along with essential topics such as breed selection, flock health and sanitation, predator protection, marketing, pricing, and much more.

Sessions 1–5: The Egg Opportunity: Building a Productive Pastured Laying Hen System

What if laying hens could become more than an egg-producing enterprise – providing reliable cash flow, food security, sanitation, and valuable work across the farm while turning the chicken's natural instincts into an advantage?

• Discover why eggs can be a powerful gateway product that creates steady cash flow and introduces customers to your broader farm offerings.
• Learn how laying hens can turn waste into value by using food scraps, sanitizing pastures, reducing insects, and cleaning up behind livestock.
• Explore the key challenges of raising laying hens, including predators, flock control, sanitation, housing, seasonal demand, and feed waste.
• Learn how "thinking like a chicken" improves farm design by working with their natural instincts, social behavior, and nesting preferences.
• Discover how to choose the right ranging system based on land, flock size, pasture layout, predators, labor, and sanitation needs.

Sessions 6–10: Starting a Strong Laying Flock: Health, Breeds, and Productivity

Build a productive, resilient laying flock by creating the right winter environment and using your hens to generate value beyond egg production.

• Learn how to choose between starting with chicks or ready-to-lay pullets based on cost, timing, and convenience.
• Discover how strategic flock timing can support more consistent winter egg production naturally.
• Explore how managing daylight, maturity, and comfort can improve winter laying performance.
• Learn how proper housing, nesting areas, nutrition, water, and winter protection support flock health.
• Discover why hardy, dual-purpose breeds can be well suited to pasture-based egg production.
• Explore how hens can add value beyond eggs by helping manage pests, flies, nutrients, and fields.

Sessions 11–14: Mobile Egg Production: The Eggmobile, Feathernet, and Pasture Management

Learn how mobile poultry systems evolved and uncover the practical lessons behind designing, moving, and managing Eggmobiles and the Millennium Feathernet for profitable pasture-based egg production.

• Learn how the Eggmobile evolved from a small experimental shelter into a mobile pasture-sanitation system that works with grazing livestock.
• Discover the key Eggmobile design principles including weight distribution, ventilation, slatted floors, chicken ladders, entrances, and trailer construction.
• Explore the logistics of profitable mobile egg production including feed, water, automated doors, modular units, and proper timing for moving birds.
• Uncover how frequent flock movement improves pasture hygiene by reducing concentrated manure areas and interrupting pest and sanitation problems.
• Discover how the Millennium Feathernet improves mobility and production with easier movement, lower predation risk, and better commercial-scale efficiency.

Sessions 15–19: Year-Round Egg Production: Winter Housing, Egg Quality, and Flock Protection

Winter doesn't have to mean simply protecting chickens from the cold – it can become an opportunity to create a warm, productive, regenerative system where the birds, bedding, sunlight, and even the greenhouse itself work together.

• Learn how sunlight, composting bedding, and proper space help keep chickens warm and comfortable.
• Explore how wood chips, scratch grains, and natural chicken activity work together to keep bedding aerated and composting.
• Uncover how high-quality hay gives chickens something to forage while helping reduce bullying and support egg production.
• See how chickens can prepare the space for vegetable production by incorporating plant material and controlling insects.
• Learn how an affordable, semi-portable hoop house can support winter poultry housing and seasonal crop production.

Sessions 20–25: How to Build a Profitable Pastured Egg Enterprise

Joel Salatin explains how to create a stronger, more profitable pastured egg operation by making the most of every bird and every egg. Discover how to market older laying hens as flavorful stewing hens, develop value-added products such as quiche and egg noodles, breed a healthier flock, calculate profitable prices, and build an egg enterprise that supports multiple streams of farm income.

• Turn older laying hens into valuable gourmet stewing hens instead of treating them as waste.
• Create additional income from eggs by producing value-added foods such as frozen quiche, egg noodles, and pound cake.
• Build a healthier, more productive flock by selecting breeding stock for longevity, resilience, and strong pasture performance.
• Calculate the true cost of producing eggs—including feed, labor, packaging, overhead, and unexpected expenses—to set profitable prices.
• Grow a resilient farm business by combining the egg enterprise with other complementary income streams and scalable poultry systems.

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Here's what's included:

• 25 Video Sessions (over 5 hours of video)
• Homework PDFs for each lesson that guide you through the essential steps
• Downloadable PDF transcripts for each video lesson

Included Sessions:

• Session 1 - The Egg Opportunity
• Session 2 - Biggest Problems
• Session 3 - Thinking Like a Chicken
• Session 4 - To Range or Not to Range
• Session 5 - Eggmobile vs Feathernet
• Session 6 - Starting Your Flock
• Session 7 - Overcoming the 3 Strikes to Poor Lay
• Session 8 - Health and Sanitation
• Session 9 - Breeds
• Session 10 - Putting Hens to Work
• Session 11 - The Eggmobile
• Session 12 - The Eggmobile Logistics
• Session 13 - The Millennium Feathernet
• Session 14 - Poultry Netting
• Session 15 - Wintering in a Hoop House
• Session 16 - Nest Boxes
• Session 17 - Broken and Dirty Eggs (Profit Robbers)
• Session 18 - Predation
• Session 19 - Egg Efficiency
• Session 20 - Marketing and Sizing
• Session 21 - Stewing Hens and Adding Value to Eggs
• Session 22 - Hatching Your Own
• Session 23 - Vision for a Better Pastured Chicken
• Session 24 - Pricing
• Session 25 - Economics

Start building your skills, confidence, and foundation for a more productive egg operation!

About Joel Salatin

Joel Salatin calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer.

Others who like him call him the most famous farmer in the world, the high priest of the pasture, and the most eclectic thinker from Virginia since Thomas Jefferson. Those who don't like him call him a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, charlatan, and starvation advocate.

With a room full of debate trophies from his high school and college days, 12 published books, and a thriving multi-generational family farm, he draws on a lifetime of food, farming and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world. He's as comfortable moving cows in a pasture as addressing CEOs in a Wall Street business conference.

Joel has been featured in National Geographic, Smithsonian, Omnivore's Dilemma, Food Inc. and many others.

On his family farm in the Shenandoah Valley, Polyface Farms, Joel produces meat he describes as "beyond organic", which is raised using what the farm describes as environmentally responsible, ecologically beneficial, sustainable agriculture.