How age of the mother affects hatching eggs

July 9, 2012 Posts No Comments

Chicks on pastureAlthough Joel Salatin doesn’t
hatch his own chicks, over the years he’s noticed that the age of the
mother hen has a large impact on the chicks that arrive on his
doorstep.  At one extreme, Salatin reports that pullets lay small
eggs that produce small chicks.  More chicks from these young
mothers tend to die compared to when the eggs come from older hens, and
the chicks gain less weight.



Meanwhile, old hens lay
huge eggs that produce huge chicks.  While that sounds good on
paper, Salatin sees a lot of inconsistency, with quite a few runts
mixed into the flock.  When we visited
a friend’s Salatin-style pasturing operation a year or so ago, I remember she had a few
birds that were less than half the size of their siblings and that
didn’t seem inclined to grow — now I suspect her chick supplier was
trying to eke one more batch of chicks out of old breeding hens.



The good news with
chicks from old hens is that fewer chicks die than usual.  On the
other hand, even though the majority of the chicks start out on the
large size, the average weight of the entire batch is below average
(probably because of those runts).



Newly hatched chickWhy do I think this information
is important?  If you’re buying in chicks, it’s handy to know that
not all of the problems you see are your own fault.  And if you’re
home
incubating, knowing
the signs of an old hen can help you decide when to cull that bird from
the breeding flock.



I hope you’ve enjoyed
this peek into Joel Salatin’s chicken operation.  If you missed
previous posts, check out the links below, and don’t forget to read the
book!


This
post is part of our Pastured Poultry
Profits series. 
Read all of the entries:


Our chicken waterer keeps our flock well
hydrated on pasture.

Selling chickens one part at a time

July 4, 2012 Posts No Comments

Pastured Poultry ProfitsOne of the interesting facets
of Pastured
Poultry Profits is
that Salatin tacked on extra information at the end to show how his
business grew and changed.  One of the most recent changes to the
business model is that he finally caved in to customer requests and
began to sell his chickens by the part as well as whole.  In 2010,
he charged $3.25 per pound for a broiler, but sold parts for following
prices:


Part of the
chicken 		Price per
pound
Boneless skinless chicken breast $13.00
Chicken tenders $14.00
Legs and thighs $4.50
Wings $3.25
Backs for stock $1.00
Necks for stock $1.00
Feet for stock $1.00
Hearts and livers $3.00



As you can tell by the
more than ten-fold difference in price between the necks and tenders,
customers like some chicken parts much more than others.  Walter
Jeffreys wrote about this concept very eloquently on his blog, explaining that meat
producers have to ensure that the whole animal gets sold.  So even
though his customers might prefer that all of his time be devoted to
making bacon (or chicken tenders in the case of Salatin’s operation),
you have to raise the price of the in-demand pieces and lower the price
of everything else until sales come out even.


Parts of a pig

Although we don’t sell
any of our meat, we had to think in a similar manner when we started to
grow your own (and to buy whole lambs from a local farmer).  Two
years ago, the only red meat I was comfortable cooking was steaks and
hamburger meat, but a whole lamb required me to learn how to roast
shoulders, stew up bones, and much more.  Like most parts of the
sustainability learning curve, the result was good for my wallet, the
earth, and our taste buds.



Which is all a long way
of saying — even if you don’t have room for chickens in your backyard
yet, you can start your journey toward self-sufficiency by simply
learning to cook with unusual cuts of meat.  Maybe then you can
afford to buy the meat from a pastured producer rather than supporting
CAFOs and factory farms.


Our POOP-free chicken waterer ensures that our broilers
stay healthy and taste delicious.
This
post is part of our Pastured Poultry
Profits series. 
Read all of the entries: