By Leeann Minogue
When the kids at school heard cheeping sounds coming from Tiffany Martinka’s son’s locker, they were confused at first, but not surprised. This was not the first time one of the Martinka kids had brought a chick to school for show and tell.
Six or seven times a year, about 90,000 freshly-hatched chicks are dropped off at the Martinka broiler chicken operation near St. Benedict, a 90-minute drive northeast from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The Martinka family places the chicks throughout their two barns, making sure each tiny chick has access to food and water. “We can place one barn in an hour, with four or five people,” Tiffany Martinka says.
The Martinka family has been in the chicken business for 15 years. They also grow grain, oilseeds and peas on their 2,000-acre grain farm. Tiffany and her husband Lane work alongside Lane’s aunt and uncle. Their three children are interested in the farm, but since the oldest child is only 10, “he can’t take on much responsibility yet,” Martinka says. With other family members pitching in during busy seasons, they can manage the farm without any outside help.
When the chicks are in the barns, someone from the Martinka family walks through twice a day to make sure they are thriving. “It’s our job to feed them and care for them,” Martinka says. They work with a professional feed nutritionist to make sure the birds are getting the mix of nutrients, supplements, and protein they need. “We know exactly what the chickens are eating every day,” Martinka says.
Like all of Canada’s broiler chickens, the birds on the Martinka farm are free-run chickens. “There are no cages in our barns,” Martinka says. The temperature inside the barns is very important. Before the chicks arrive, the buildings are heated to 35 C, “even on our minus 40 days.” As the chickens grow, they become a little less delicate, so the barns are kept a little cooler by the time the birds are fully grown.
On the Martinka farm, chickens are grown to a weight of 2.35 kilograms. “That’s what consumers are asking for at the grocery stores,” Martinka says. It takes about 36 days for the chicks to reach this weight. Once they hit their target weight, the chickens are taken to Wynyard for processing.
“The very next day, our barns are cleaned out,” Martinka says. They use pulley systems to raise their feed and water lines to the roof, then they push the manure out of the barn into the manure pile and spray down the buildings. Two weeks later, another shipment of chicks will arrive. “We plan our holidays around the barn schedule,” Martinka says.
The Martinka family takes pride in the full circle they’ve created on their farm. “Every spring and fall, manure from the chicken barns is spread on our fields.” Through soil sampling, the Martinkas can measure the nutrients in the soil and tweak their fertilizer needs. “On some fields, we can reduce our purchased fertilizer by up to 50 per cent by using manure,” Martinka says.
While they use a feed supplement to optimize nutrition, 30 percent of the chickens’ total feed ration comes straight from the barley grown on the Martinka farm. And straw from the grain farm is used as bedding for new chicks. “It goes full circle on our farm,” Martinka says.
To make the farm even more sustainable, the family is in the process of installing solar power to run the operation. Eventually, Martinka says, “it’ll run the whole farm.”
Even with three young children, the chickens, the grain farm, and a new small-scale venture into raising sheep, Martinka still makes time to advocate for agriculture. “I’ve given over 100 virtual tours of the barn to school classrooms,” she says. As well as making videos and using social media, Martinka is the only female director on the board of the Chicken Farmers of Saskatchewan.
Martinka loves working in the agriculture industry. It’s a busy life, but she has an opportunity to be on the farm with her family most of the time, and she enjoys working with the animals. “My favorite part of the cycle is when the new birds come in,” Martinka says. Laying down the fresh straw in the barn offers a new fresh start to set young chicks up for success. “New life on the farm is just the best,” Martinka says.
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