Eggs and Poultry


Roasting Chickens

We offer fresh young, four to six pound chickens, from July to November.

Our roasting chickens are provided with the type of life chickens prefer; pasture and quality natural grain, clean water, fresh air and sunshine.  We raise these birds in a way that promotes their good health, and in turn our own.  Pasture raised poultry has been shown to have less fat, fewer calories, more omega-e fatty acids, more beta-carotene and a lower risk of e-coli.  And, we never-ever use synthetic hormones or antibiotics on any of our poultry products.

But, perhaps the thing people tell us the most about our chicken is that it tastes delicious.


Whole Chicken with giblets @ $3.50 per pound

Roasting Chickens...

When we decided to start to raise roasting chickens we looked at the catalog from a hatchery in Pennsylvania and saw several different types. One variety was a Cornish Rock Cross, a white blocky bird with incredible growth potential. This sounded good so we ordered fifty. I have had chickens most of my life and almost from the beginning these birds seemed strange. They didn’t really act like chickens. They ate, a lot and they grew almost as you watched them but they didn’t move about much. These birds just kinda sat in front of the feeder and then they would get a drink of water and then they sat in front of the feeder and ate again. We would hand pick them some greens while still in the brooder coop and usually the greens were still there when you went back to fill the feeder again.

Once they were fully feathered we moved them outside into a portable electrified fence. The fence is electrified to keep the predators out and the chickens in. They had plenty of grass and clover in their little pasture and we figured as soon as they ate down the grass a little we would just move the fence and give them some fresh pasture. Well we never needed to move the fence; these chickens didn’t seem to eat grass.  What they did do is plop their butts down next to the nearest feeder and eat broiler ration…period. They didn’t scratch the ground looking for bugs either, nor did they seem to pick up grit. And when a hawk would go low overhead and the laying flock would scatter with the rooster’s warning call these birds would do nothing but continue to eat broiler ration. It seemed the ‘chicken’ had been bred out of these birds and what we had purchased was meat making machines.

Cornish Rock Cross are the birds bred to be broilers in the huge broilers houses. They are bred to grow quickly to a butchering weight of 4 pounds in 8 weeks and a butchering weight of 5-7 pounds in 12 weeks. They are kept in semidarkness; so that they can’t see one another too well so that they don’t start fighting. They are allotted one square foot of space per bird within these coops. And once the birds are put into the coops the coops aren’t cleaned until the flock is grown. Which is why they have huge exhaust fans on the end of the coops…if the fans ever stop working the flock will die within hours from the heat of all those crowded bodies and the ammonia fumes from all the chicken manure. This is a stressful situation and stress brings on disease and so the birds are fed antibiotics from day one. They were not bred to be pastured poultry.

Now I know a lot of farmers raise these birds as pastured poultry and yes they grow incredibly fast and get you a marketable product in a hurry but we were kinda freaked out with their strange non chicken like behavior. I’m sure our Cornish Rock Cross enjoyed being outside in the sunshine but why bother putting a chicken on pasture if they won’t eat grass?  We looked back in the hatchery catalog and saw another variety; the Kosher King. They proclaimed it to be the best tasting chicken you would ever taste…well that sounded good so we ordered some. They look rather like beefy barred rocks and these birds act like chickens…hooray! They scratched, they ate grass and greens and bugs, they knew hawks were bad guys and they occasionally fought with one another.

We continue to raise Kosher Kings exclusively. They grow slower than the Cornish Rock Cross and have a larger longer frame than those birds but the taste is wonderful. It takes fully 14 weeks to get them up to a well padded carcass of five to six pounds. We believe the taste is worth the wait and we hope you'll agree.

 Brown and White Eggs

We offer large brown and white eggs from true pastured hens year round.  We believe, and our customers agree, that our eggs are some of the best tasting eggs you'll ever try.  Like our roasting chickens our laying hens are given the type of life chickens prefer; pasture, and quality natural grain, clean water, fresh air and sunshine.

Everyday at about ten, after most of the eggs have been laid, we let the hens roam the farm. The gate is opened and it's best to stand to the side as three hundred hens stampede to get out to eat grass and greens, bugs and grit. Perhaps they'll enjoy a little dust bath or stretch out to enjoy the sun. Then about four in the afternoon we wander back up to the barn to begin afternoon chores...and all the hens follow you back to the coop for some  fresh grain. They're locked into their large chicken coop overnight to protect them predators. It's quite a sight to see Ray being trailed by a couple hundred birds.

Brown and White Eggs @ $3.50 per dozen
 

Mother Earth News has a very informative article on 'The Good Egg'. 

Mother Earth News show free-range eggs are more nutritious and have half the cholesterol of supermarket eggs.  Read the results of their test telling us what we already knew, animals treated humanely produce superior quality product.

'The Good Egg'

 

White Midget Turkeys

One of our goals for 2009 is to start raising turkeys. But not your typical store bought type of broad breasted turkey, we want to raise heirloom turkeys. We’ve settled on a breed called white midget turkeys. As the name indicates they’re small, an adult tom weighing in at about 20 pounds and a hen at 13 pounds and so the slaughter weighs would be about 10-12 for toms and 7-9 pounds for the hens…so if you need 20 pounds of turkey for Thanksgiving you’ll need to buy two. But we think the weight will be a good thing; if you don’t need a 20 pounder you can still have a turkey on the table. They’re supposed to hearty birds, that are friendly and the size makes them easier to handle. Slow Foods USA has run a taste test and named the white midget turkey as the best tasting turkey, beating out all the other heirloom breeds and of course the commercial breeds. The white midget is able to breed naturally, in broad breasted varieties the toms are so broad breasted they can’t mount a hen to breed her naturally so they need to artificially inseminate the hens. The hens are prolific layers producing 60-80 eggs a year so a small flock will give you plenty of eggs to incubate for poults (baby turkey) and the eggs you don’t need for poults are supposed to be rich and delicious and wonderful for making pastries. The hens are good mothers and will incubate her own eggs; a trait bred out of most commercial turkeys. I’m very excited about trying this. All in all I think it’s the breed for us. We'll keep you updated and we hope to be able to offer fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving 2009.