Meet Darren Messing of One-Eared Dog Farm

Today we’d like to introduce you to Darren Messing. 

Hi Darren, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I grew up on a third-generation family farm in the thumb of Michigan; taking care of cattle, doing hay and straw, driving tractors, and more. I moved to West Michigan after graduating college for job opportunities and to be near my wife’s family. I knew that I could not live without a connection to agriculture, but did not know where to begin. I met my business partner Mike Pcolinski, who also had dreams of starting a farm. We each knew we wanted to start something unique and became business partners in the fall of 2019! 

We have learned so much in our first three years. It truly began for us in the spring of 2020 when we picked up our first 50 chicks at the post office. Now, we select pheasants to breed in the fall and incubate our own eggs for the new years’ chicks. The breeders are released each spring into the wild as a thank you for providing us with chicks for the new year. The rest of the pheasants are processed in October each year and sold. Our primary market includes restaurants and meat markets in Michigan, and we sell to individuals locally as well. 

Mike and I are both passionate about learning and continuously improving everything we do on the farm. We love to take on new challenges to help the farm grow each year and sharpen our skills in the process. Our largest strides of 2022 were landing our first partnerships with local businesses including Galleria and Hawkshead and going live with a website. I cannot wait to what we will accomplish in 2023! 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We have had plenty of opportunities to learn from our mistakes over the years. When building our brooder barn for the chicks, we did not follow the instructions perfectly, leading to shifted framing when we took a break and more work to ensure the building was set and supported as a result. Another example took place during our second year. We got overly excited to move chicks to the flight pens due to nice weather and a few birds flew directly through the net! We caught the chicks (that took some time) but had to watch closely and carefully in the following week until they were larger. The learning has consistently been that no amount of research will prepare us for every situation and to slow down and consider all possible outcomes of our decision-making before acting. 

We’ve been impressed with One-Eared Dog Farm, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The name of our farm comes from Mike’s first dog on the property, Anja, who was a one-eared dog! 

Our specialty is fully dressed pheasant, pasture-raised without antibiotics or vaccines. Our most commonly asked question is how to cook pheasant. Our answer? Low and slow! Pheasant is low in fat, so it dries out more quickly than other poultry such as chicken. My favorite is smoked, but slow-cooked in broth, spatchcocked and roasted, and grilled are also great. Many of our customers have never tried pheasant and others in the area that raise pheasant generally do so for hunting. We are proud that we have a unique local offering that is special in that it is only available for limited times during the year and that customers know the pheasants were raised with both quality of life and quality of product in mind. We are also proud to be active in the community. Our business helps decorate Glenn for the annual “Circle of Lights” and cleans up after the Holidays in exchange for the Christmas trees. We repurpose the trees to create natural shelters in winterizing our flight pens over the winter. 

What are your plans for the future?
My plan for the future is to continue to refine our processes, partner with more restaurants and meat markets, and eventually purchase more land to build more flight pens and/or expand our offering in another way. We are always looking for opportunities to reach new heights. 

Contact Info:

• Website: oneeareddogfarm.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oneeareddogfarm/?hl=en 

Image Credits
Lauren Messing Photography
Sacha Ratto
Greg Ruppert