2021 Chicken changes

2021 Was an eventful year. We tried lots of new things and learned a lot along the way. 

One change we tried in 2021 was to how we process our pasture raised chickens. We’ve been processing our birds ourselves on the farm since 2019. This allows us to keep the cost down and to have direct control of the quality of the birds. It makes for a very long day of processing and then a day to recover (basically a whole weekend). 

Since we sold out of chickens in 2020 we planned to double our production and hire a traveling chicken processing company to come to the farm and process the birds for us. The cost was a consideration but we also calculated the benefit of having two “free” weekends, and give our family a break from helping.  

The scheduling with the chicken processing company ran into a couple of snags and then we discovered the demand for chickens had changed in the second summer of the pandemic. We were able to use the chicken processing company once and decided to process the other two batches ourselves. 

One of the cool things we learned in the process was how efficient and smooth our process has gotten. We were able to compare our stats to another person and we are right up there. We were able to tweak a few more things and shorten our time even more. 

While the plans to hire out the chicken processing didn’t work we were able to make changes that allow us to keep tight control on the quality control of our chickens. 

Another super cool added benefit of keeping this process “as is” involves our customers! We have an option for customers to come to the farm and pick up birds, and have had a few requests to observe processing. We live for this stuff!!!! Meeting people who are interested in learning more about chickens is one of our favorite things.