Get to Know
Our Animals
Cows
Dancing Moose Farm raises 2-4 cows on the property each year. We use the cows to feed our family and restore our long-neglected pastureland. It is important to us to know where our meat comes from and that it is ethically raised.
We use a rotational grazing system to build soil, improve our animal's health, retain moisture and increase the fertility of our land. In addition to cattle, we are experimenting with a rotation of our Idaho Pasture Pigs and integrating chickens into our grazing system.
Rotational grazing is a managed grazing system that requires animals to be moved frequently between paddocks based upon the forage quality of the pasture and our animal's nutritional needs.
We use a combination of permanent and portable electric fencing and a solar water pumping system to make this management practice efficient and allows us to move our animals quickly and without stress.
Chickens
Our chickens roost in an old 1956 Shasta camp trailer converted into a chicken coop. Our fun little mobile coop is moved around to provide our chickens with new grass to peck around in and new manure to spread around our pasture.
Raising both meat birds and layers we provide our customers with farm fresh eggs and chicken.
Buying farm fresh chicken and supporting a local farmer, knowing your chickens are free range, and happy gives you peace of mind that doesn't come with the store bought variety. Give our birds a try and we are sure you will be back. Follow us on Instagram for availability.
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While visiting the chickens be sure to peek into the Earthship inspired chicken coop. One hundred sixty tires and a lot of hard work went into building this structure during one of our sustainability classes. Ben Adams from Taos, New Mexico partnered with us to design and build this structure to shelter our chicks. Ben has built many Earthship structures and was invaluable in the process of constructing ours. We had a beautiful weekend hosting 19 other likeminded folks who participated in learning the techniques for building with tires, geothermal benefits and solar gain.
Pigs
At Dancing Moose Farm we love our Idaho Pasture Pigs. Idaho Pasture Pigs are designed for small farms like ours and are bred to be pasture based, rotationally grazed and are good meat hogs. Our pigs are friendlier than domestic pigs. The ideal weight for our pigs will be 350 pounds.
Sows (mother pigs) have a better disposition at farrowing time and boars (males) are easier to handle than traditional pigs.
The benefit of Idaho Pasture Pigs is that they have short upturned snouts which allow them to graze grass instead of routing it up. However if you keep them in one place too long they will rout up grass just out of boredom. At Dancing Moose Farm we like to use our pigs to ready our beds for vegetable production. In the past we have used them to ready our garlic beds.
We love the many colors that Idaho Pasture Pigs come in including red, red and black, black and white, ginger and tri-colored.
Ducks
Recent additions to our farm are the ducks. We have tried to keep them in the past but encountered a predator problem and lost our flock. We will be introducing a new flock of ducks in the spring of 2022.
Our ducks will be a great source of eggs for baking as the larger egg and higher fat content makes them ideal for this purpose. Just like our chickens we will breed to grow our flock and for meat production.
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The breed we have selected for this is Blue Swedish. They are hearty birds and have a good meat production, as well as, egg laying. Blue Swedish do not stay true to color when bred so we will end up with some blacks and silver.
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Ducks are also a great source of entertainment on the farm. The youngest Daileys love playing with the fluffy yellow birds and their personalities provide hours of entertainment for anyone who visits the farm.
BEES
Our hives are managed and owned by Nick James, a local Ogden resident who has a passion for bees. Learning about the colony collapse of bee hives encouraged Nick to take up natural beekeeping. He is our bee whisperer and very patient in trying new techniques and handles the bees with kid gloves. He takes time from his often busy days of being a licensed electrician to spend time up at the farm. Nick will be teaching classes in natural beekeeping at the farm.
