Producer

Black Dog Farm is a pasture-based pork and poultry farm located in beautiful Livingston, Montana. The farm was established in 2017 and is owned and managed by Tim & Kira, a husband and wife team. We work hard every day to raise meat & eggs from animals shown respect and dignity every day of their lives. Our animals live outdoors, rotating around our farm inside portable fencing and helping us rejuvinate our pastures after many decades of neglect. Our pigs, laying hens, and meat chickens eat a corn, soy, and GMO free feed of barley, peas, wheat, camelina, and species-specific organic mineral. Our feed is grown and milled about 60 miles from our farm by another local farmer. We employ a team of livestock guardian dogs to keep both our animals, and our resident predators, safe. We believe raising animals outdoors on pasture, where they can express their natural behaviors, produces healthier, tastier food and is better for the animals and better for the environment. We are strong advocates of the local food movement, supporting other hyper-local farmers, ranchers, and producers,

We raise Freedom Ranger meat chickens from the Freedom Ranger Hatchery. These chickens are hearty, active, and excellent foragers. This year we will receive 400 day-old chicks in the mail every other week starting March 1st. The chicks spend a varying amount of time in our indoor brooder (generally 2-4 weeks, depending on the weather) where they have heat, plenty of space to run around, and outdoor access on nice days. They then move onto pasture where we provide them with moveable shelters and protection from predators in the form of our guardian dogs. The chickens are closed into their shelters at night during the early season when weather is less predictable and let out first thing in the morning. Later in the season, we don’t close them in at night. This is why we say we raise them under “open sky,” rather than always keeping them in their tractors. The chickens are processed between 12 and 14 weeks right here on our farm in our state licensed poultry processing facility.

In addition to the plants, insects, and whatever else they forage on our pastures, the birds are fed a mix of barley, peas, wheat, and camelina that is grown and milled locally, about 60 miles from the farm. Our feed is free of corn, soy, and GMOs. Their feed also has an organic poultry mineral & organic, sustainably harvested, animal welfare approved fish meal for added protein. We are proud to support another local farmer with our feed purchases and are proud of the way we raise our chickens, even if it means a TON more work. The result is chicken you can feel good about eating: birds raised slow & well and a product with tons and tons of flavor — the way chicken was meant to taste!