Chicken

Let’s talk chicken.

Over the last few years we have grown and sold broilers, or as we refer to them as “meat chickens”. We have always broken even or lost a little bit on the venture. At the beginning of 2013, Vicky said I was crazy to spend the time and money raising the birds to get no return. I enjoy doing it, but as usual, she was right, so we decided to not raise the broilers anymore except for our own consumption. Upon making the announcement that we were out of the broiler business, depressed voices were heard from far and wide. Chicken customers were saddened, outraged and emotionally distraught. Some of the quotes were: “My kids can tell when I serve store bought chicken and won’t eat it.” “Rousedale chicken is so tender, juicy and tasty!” “I’ve heard Steve sleeps in the chicken house when they’re having bad raccoon dreams. That’s the kind of love we want our chickens to receive!”

Anyway, I couldn’t take the pressure, the tears and quite frankly the threats. So we are back in the chicken business!

We are a small farm. We can only do 100 broilers at a time, to raise them the way we feel they should be raised. That leaves us out of buying much of our feed, litter, etc. by bulk. We spend more time with our chickens each day making sure they have clean water, fluffing their litter, running fans properly to cool them, and getting them outside to range on grass, bugs and grit. As a result of these things, our prices have to be a bit higher than some other small farmers in the business. We think that the lives the chickens get to have here and the final product you receive is worth the price.

We will only sell whole birds. They can remain whole or cut up in parts. If you purchase multiple cut up birds, the parts can be packaged any way you would like. You can have the whole cut up bird vacuum packed in one package or, for instance, if you would like 6 birds cut up that would give you:

12 split breasts

12 drumsticks

12 thighs

12 wings

Packaged any way you want. Everything is vacuumed packed. Most whole birds will run between 4 and 4.5 pounds. Cut up gives you about 2.5 to 3 pounds.

The pricing is:

$4.50 per pound for a whole chicken

$6.50 per pound for a cut up whole chicken packaged any way you would like

$8.40 per pound if you opt for boneless breasts rather than bone in breasts on your cut up chicken

Please email or call with any questions.

That concludes the chicken email.

Vicky and Steve