Eat, Drink, Savor: A visit to Pasture Chick Ranch

Lea este articulo en español aquí.

Lisa Knutson never envisioned herself running a ranch for profit. 

That is until 15 years ago, when the San Juan Bautista native (who raised chickens in her youth), purchased another “slimy, yellow, Costco chicken.” 

“Chicken should be pink—it shouldn’t be all glubby with fat, and it shouldn’t stink,” she told BenitoLink. “I told my husband, ‘I’m either going to grow our chicken, butcher it myself, or we’re gonna start eating tofu.’ And he’s not a big tofu fan.”

That is how the Pasture Chick Ranch began, Knutson said. 

She’s been raising broiler chickens, eggs, turkeys and goats on her Santa Ana Valley home ranch for over a decade. Knutson and her husband, Courtney, who works full-time as an equipment manufacturer for the fresh-cut industry, sell directly to consumers at farmers markets throughout Silicon Valley and through local community-supported agriculture businesses. She currently grows anywhere from 250 to 300 birds for meat, which are harvested every other week, and has an egg production demand of 250 eggs per week.

“It’s a lot of managing and cleaning of both humans and animals,” Knutson said. “And then on top of that, we have almost 290 acres that have five strands of hot wire that have to be managed, kept up and checked on because we have wild pigs—we have all kinds of things that want to either eat our grass, to eat our chickens or to kill our goats.”

There’s a “steep learning curve” to raising chickens and to what goes into their health and maintenance, Knutson said. And for her, it all begins when they arrive from their hatcheries.  

Once the chickens get to her ranch—the meat chickens are delivered from Pitman Family Farms, located outside of Fresno; her laying hens are picked up from a Davis hatchery—they are given water prepared with vitamins, probiotics and an “oregano-base solution that help keep their immunities up.”

“We take every bird out by hand and we give 1,500 little chicks a drink of water,” she said. “It takes so long. But if you don’t, they may not find the water and they’ll dehydrate and die. Chickens can be so fragile.”

Knutson remains vigilant about her chickens throughout the day. 

“You’re just constantly having to look at every little detail,” she said. 

On a normal day, Knutson and her three border collies ride out to her 270-acre ranch for their daily inspection on 1,500 laying hens and approximately 1,000 broiler chickens.

This includes monitoring the hot wire surrounding the chickens, and checking on the livestock dogs guarding them. 

“I sort of just go out and do a system check,” she said. “Did anybody die? Are the goats in our place? Are the chickens running around at the neighbors’?”

She also monitors the living situations of each bird, keeping them as stress-free as possible. 

“When animals get stressed, they release adrenaline, and adrenaline makes the meat taste bad,” she said. “No stress makes for good food.”

Knutson recently found that her laying hens were producing eggs slower than usual. She attributed this to having moved them prior to this production-drop, and being affected by the stress of moving. She put them on probiotics, more vitamins, electrolytes and an oregano-based supplement. 

“We couldn’t get their windbreaks [on the chicken coop roofs] up until the following weekend; we just ran out of time. It was just too much stress on them,” she said. 

Along with daily supplements, Knutson vaccinates her laying hens against viruses such as infectious bursal disease, Newcastle disease, fowl pox and infectious laryngotracheitis, which she said could be spread from wild birds. 

She also needs to stay ahead of changes in season—not only to reduce stress, but to prevent death.

Knutson said each coop is adjustable for the seasons. Each has a watering system, and the meat chickens have two different roof structures: a solid polyketone plastic and a shade cloth. 

“Right now, the shade cloth is adding another layer of thickness to keep the heat in, but we’ll have to adjust it,” she said. “In the summer, the shade cloth becomes a windbreak. In the winter it becomes a rainbreak. We have to adjust the height of it to keep the wind from blowing all the way through them, whereas in the summer, you want that. You need them cooling off at night or they die.” 

Once temperatures reach 92 degrees, Knutson said she begins watering the chickens down.

“They’ll fluff in it and they’ll cool off, and it’s enough to save their life,” she said.

Along with monitoring her chickens under changing weather, Knutson said she needs to remain vigilant on routine days, as well. She once lost 600 chickens in one afternoon, costing her approximately $10,000, after an employee neglected to follow her instructions. 

“I said why did you not do this? He said he didn’t think it was important,” she recalled. “Finding good people is hard; they can either make you or break you.”

A recent case of avian flu detected in San Benito County also had her chickens being tested for the virus. With assistance from a representative of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Knutson tested 10% of her birds, or 15 birds, by swabbing their throats and sending the provided kit to University of California, Davis for testing. She kept her chickens under quarantine while awaiting the results. 

Though the virus was undetected in her chickens, she is still saddened for the affected businesses. 

“I am a small, tiny, tiny entity compared to this family that’s been at it,” she said. “So to have to walk through something like this is tragic.”

Though Knutson knows she won’t become rich with her business, she said it’s enough money to support her and her husband’s retirement. And she enjoys doing the work—even the tasks she doesn’t, such as fixing broken hotwire.

“We aren’t banking on a huge profit margin, but it’s decent,” she said. “And I get to do something that I’m good at and that I love.”

BenitoLink thanks our underwriters, Hollister Super and Windmill Market, for helping to expand the Eat, Drink, Savor series and give our readers the stories that interest them. Hollister Super (two stores in Hollister) and Windmill Market (in San Juan Bautista) support reporting on the inspired and creative people behind the many delicious food and drink products made in San Benito County. All editorial decisions are made by BenitoLink.