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Raising them up right

By
Hannah Gross

Hannah Gross
NLJ Correspondent 
 
Whether it’s butchering 320 chickens, raising emus or growing a 525-pound pumpkin, life is never boring for Paul and Bailey Eitel at the Broken Arrow Farm just outside of Newcastle. According to the farm’s website, the animals are fed with a hormone-free diet in a “low stress environment,” so as to provide healthy and delicious meat “the way nature intended it to be.” 
Paul said the couple has expanded on agriculture diversification on their small acreage with “several different enterprises that have a niche market and make a profit.” For about eight years, they have been raising and selling pastured poultry and meat rabbits, and they eventually incorporated beef cows. 
However, combining his love of agriculture with business started long before that. Paul grew up in rural northwest Nebraska, and he began raising rabbits at an early age and sold them to the Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Zoo as meat for its animals.
“I grew up on a ranch, and Bailey comes from an ag background too.  … It’s something we like to do,” Paul said. “I’ve always raised rabbits since I was a little kid.”
He needed a name for his rabbit business, and while he was exploring the ranch in Colome, South Dakota, he found a broken arrow in the field and hung it over the barn. The name stuck. 
With a degree in range management with a minor in ag business, Paul wanted to get back into raising rabbits again after college, and in 2014, he moved to the Newcastle area, leasing a plot of land in Painted Hills to raise meat chickens, in addition to the laying hens. 
What started out as butchering 25 or so chickens the first year –  an all-day affair, soon grew into something much larger. Once people caught wind that Paul was raising chickens, they were interested in purchasing some from him, so he more than doubled his production the following year. 
Making a few upgrades here and there, Paul invested in an automatic plucker to make the butchering process more efficient. He met Bailey through a mutual friend at a chicken processing event, where she couldn’t believe that many chickens could be processed in a day until she saw it with her own eyes. 
Paul bought the 90-acre property they live on now in 2016. They recently butchered and froze 320 chickens, and they have 380 more chicks in their garage. To butcher that many chickens in one day takes a lot of work, but many of their extended family and friends come to help and make it a family event. From capturing the chicken to getting it packaged and in the freezer takes about two minutes per chicken. 
“We (have) a really good customer base (for pastured poultry). It started out with word of mouth and just kind of grew from there. We have folks coming from as far as Nebraska, South Dakota obviously, edge of Montana (and) Cheyenne,” Paul said. 
The chickens, specifically Cornish rock fryers, start out in the brooder for a few weeks before moving to the pasture in what is called a chicken tractor. This contraption, which is moved frequently, keeps the chickens contained without being cooped up while still allowing them to feed off fresh grass and insects, in addition to their non-medicated, chemical and hormone-free chick grower and locally grown grain, according to the Broken Arrow Farm website. “It’s kind of like an intensive grazing system. They’re on there for a day, and they eat the grass and they’re gone. And the grass comes back up better and fertilized too,” Bailey said. 
Paul has a passion for birds, so in addition to chickens, the Eitels raise geese, ducks and even emus. Once the emus start laying, the couple will raise the hatching eggs and possibly use them for meat later down the road. 
Paul still raises meat rabbits, having a selection of Rex and New Zealand rabbits with about 30 producing does, and instead of a zoo, he now sells most of them to Reptile Gardens. The Eitels also have a few hogs (raised just for their family), beef cows and one dairy cow.  
“I keep trying to convince him we should get alpacas or something, but he says no,” Bailey said, with a laugh. 
While Paul takes care of the animals, Bailey usually tends to the garden. Paul said she knows everything there is to know about fruit trees. 
“Paul’s obsessed with birds, and I’m obsessed with plants,” she said, adding that her love for plants grew in college when she received her Bachelor’s Degree in ecology with a minor in botany.
Their garden contains all the usual vegetables: peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, beans, peas, lettuce, onions and celery. One year, they raised a 525-pound pumpkin, and last year, they produced a 400-pounder. Because of the late freeze, Paul doesn’t expect to grow them as big this year. They also have several pear, apple and peach trees, in addition to a cherry bush, and this year they decided to experiment with a grape vineyard, both table and wine grapes. 
With two kids both under the age of 2 and Paul being a member of the Newcastle Volunteer Fire Department, a lot of hard work and long hours go into keeping up with the farm, but they just keep adjusting their schedules accordingly and enjoy the process, they said. Paul explained that the cows come home in the fall, then they calve the cows before sending them back in the pastures again for the summer. By this time, the meat chicks start coming in. 
“Each season kind of has something different going on with each animal or enterprise,” Paul said. “I just enjoy the freedom of doing what we enjoy doing.” 

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