Some people refer to our chicken as ‘expensive chicken’. The old me would have been offended by that. However, I have learned to take that as a opportunity to educate people on what it really takes to raise good, quality meat. We can’t offer grocery store prices on our whole chickens because honestly our pasture raised chickens just aren’t grocery store quality. I used to be one of those people that shopped around for the best sale price on chicken. Then I married a farmer and I learned the quality and value of farm fresh meat.
I learned not knowing where and what my chicken (or any of my meat for that matter) was raised or fed was concerning for me. For this post I will focus on what we do here on our farm to produce the best quality meat. I still don’t know what the cheap chickens in the grocery store is fed, or where it’s raised so it’d be hard to focus on that.
We purchase our chicks from a hatchery here in Michigan, we get them at just a couple days old. We put them in a brooder house (an old shed that we have converted to a nice warm environment with cedar sawdust shavings) and give them fresh food and water 2-3 times per day. We check on them often to make sure they are all healthy and doing well. I can honestly tell you during this stage they are living their best life of any chicks I know.
Once they reach about 3-4 weeks (depending on the weather outside) we move them outside into a chicken tractor (see picture) that my husband has made, this year we made a second one to give them even more room per tractor. These tractors are set in our hay field and moved 1-2 times per day so that they always have access to fresh green grass and alfalfa. This also ensures our hayfields are naturally well fertilized.
They are supplemented with with non-gmo grain that we purchase from a local feed mill, and water is changed 2 times per day when we move the tractors. We care for these birds so they are free from predators and always have access to all things fresh: grain, water, grass and best of all fresh air blows through their tractor all day and night!
Now for the cost break down as to why they are so expensive. $2 per chick from the hatchery, $4 to process each chicken, $15 per day ( x 45-ish days) in feed for a large batch of chickens. This year all of this averaged $10.50 per bird for us to raise. That doesn’t even include our time and travel spent taking care of the birds. It also does not include the money we have into feeders, tractors, and waterers. When we take them to a licensed processor it takes 3 trips, one to pick up the crates that we load them into to haul them, one to drop off the birds and one to pick up the processed and wrapped birds. This is about 35 minutes from our farm one way.
I am not telling you this for any sympathy. I am merely hoping to educate you why your local farmer sells this ‘expensive chicken’ at the prices that they do. We don’t make a lot of money on our chicken’s, however the benefits of providing this option for you, for our community, is something we take pride in.
New, easy to move design made out of PVC pipe.
Our original design that is heavy to move and not enough room for all the birds we raise.