We raise Cornish X’s; a meat bird that was developed in the last 40 years to put on weight really fast. It’s a hybrid and although you can get eggs from them, it’s not cost effective.
The minimum investment in top breeding stock is $12,000 and then there’s the cost of erecting a climate controlled building and purchasing incubators.
Roast chicken is my favorite way of cooking the birds too but I’m becoming more enamoured of poaching as well.
Either method allows you to really work the chicken-we get at least 3 meals of a midsize bird and a great stock.
Terry has a wonderful recipe for oven-fried chicken on our website that uses a ton less grease too.
Our poultry exemption license doesn’t allow us to sell across state lines and although I’d happily send you a couple of birds for free, the shipping would make it the most expensive chicken you’ve ever eaten.
The birds are inverted upside down in ‘kill cones’ (ours are actually modified detergent bottles) and we slit the jugular on either side of the neck. This causes the birds to lose consciousness within about 30 seconds and bleeds out the meat.
I’ve talked to a couple of Iman’s in Austin and we are actually considered halal because we raise the birds compassionately, we say a prayer of thanks before we kill, we are people of the book and we slit the throats with a sharp blade. There was a bit of debate as to whether we had to pray over every individual chicken or could just do a generic prayer over the entire lot.
No inquires from Rabbi’s yet.
Many farmers* are* one bad season away from bankruptcy which is why we rejected the conventional corporate ag model.
As these birds grow so quickly, we get a return on our investment every 5-7 weeks.
We’re far from wealthy but we’ve manage to pay all our bills every month,put a (very) little aside and have almost no debt.
As we set our own prices for the chicken, we are not dependent on the market to determine what we charge. I can truthfully say that both our retail and wholesale clients are extremely supportive of us and go out of their way to let us know that they appreciate what we’re doing. Plus everybody eats and once you make the switch to healthy meat, you don’t go back.
We also live pretty simply and are self-entertaining.
For me, it’s a quality of life issue.
I work with my best friend every day and I pay our one employee a living wage. I don’t need a gym membership because I do plenty of hauling, toting and carrying every day and I don’t worry about dieting either.
We eat very well because we can trade chicken for fresh organic veggies at the farmers market each week.
The farmer that grinds our grain also trades chicken for venison during hunting season and we have a freezer full of wonderful wild pig that we trapped.
Some of Austin’s best restaurants serve our chicken and the chefs periodically invite us for a free meal which is always a nice treat.
I live in jeans or shorts and T-shirts year 'round so my clothing budget is minimal.
I have zero commute time except on the two days a week that I do deliveries and the market.
When he feels slightly caught up (there’s always something that needs to be done on the farm), Terry joins me on delivery day and we catch lunch and go swimming or to a movie.
We don’t get to vacation much (in fact, we took our first vacation in 3 years in 2010) but when you like what you’re doing, you don’t need to escape from your job.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard labor intensive work. You get hot and sweaty in the summer and cold and wet in the winter.
We’re never totally ‘off’ but we don’t have to madly rush through the day either.
Most days we start between 6:30 and 7 am and wrap it up between 4-5 PM.
We take long afternoon lunch breaks ( 2-3 hours) on a good day and I like being able to throw a load of laundry in while I’m getting work related tasks.
Of course, there’s always the nights we’re out at midnight in a thunderstorm as lighting crashes around us.
Nothing’s perfect but this works for us.