Skip to main content

Meat Chicken: Our story

It is one of the things we did on the farm, every employee can purchase, at cost, our meat birds.  Chickens were one of the first things we did on the farm; we have two distinct flocks -- egg layers and meat birds.  In 2019, the meat bird production was supposed to be only for our family's consumption.  But we got three batches of 25 chicks; the third was sent by mistake, and we could not send them back.  

So we decided to give the extra to our employees.  That proved popular so in 2020 we offered to sell the chicken to our employees at costs (only the feed).    Last year, on average, each employee bought 7.25 chickens.  They signed up before Christmas for how many chickens they wanted.  This year our 133 employees signed up for 8 chickens each.  Our 2024 chick order will be for 1,200 birds.  

This year on September 23, we processed the entire flock (900 birds)  All our employees and their families helped us make it into a party, and some of our children joined too (My wife is a master of organization, its a lot of fun, we also feed everyone).  Over 10 hours, the entire flock was processed (many hands and many plucking machines).  On Sunday several employees and I packed and freezed all the birds (they need to rest overnight).  What is expensive in meat chicken is the feed and the processing.  Everyone pays their share of the feed, and everyone participates in the chicken processing.  The hearts and livers are collected the rest is sent to the biodigerters.  Our production generates zero waste.  

We do it for several reasons, first, it keeps us close to our employees (you tell the truth when you are knuckle-deep in a chicken).  Second, it gives our employees access to top-quality chicken, that they would not otherwise buy.  Doing otherwise would be a waste of goodwill.  

When we take all our outside costs into consideration (and I mean everything) it's less than ₤1,500 a year (excluding the feed) -- the set-up costs were maybe ₤3,000 (fencing and chicken tractors).  We get a lot in return.  Goodwill from our employees a chance to meet their families in a fun way.  Maybe it's the reason our staff turnover has been so low. 

For those who wonder total feed cost per bird is around ₤2.50. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will slap them with no-fly status. Update;  It seems that what they threw on the airc
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more