Report from Freezer Camp

At twelve weeks, our meat birds were ready to go … large, healthy, and full of spizzerinctum, half of them roosters learning to crow in that funny multi-tone adolescent way. And so we set a date with our farmer friend Bruce, master of dispatch, with many years behind him of raising and processing all sorts of poultry and livestock.

Although we had given some small thought to it ahead of time, we found ourselves yesterday morning trying to piece together some sort of adequate transport at the last minute. It turned out to be relatively simple – Joohn cobbled together a frame of found lumber screwed to the top edges of the back of the pickup, a length of chicken wire attached all around at the top. Austin was my hired wrangler, rounding up all 24 quite birds efficiently and loading them into the truck. He is fearless with roosters in ways I am not.

So off we went, a 20-minute drive made longer as I drove more slowly and carefully, mindful of my cargo. When we arrived, Bruce and Tom had already begun their work, with another family’s birds already in process. Ours cooled their heels in the shade until it was their turn.

Did I screw up my courage enough to help? Well, not really … I did stay for the whole thing, observed and asked questions and learned, and at the end did the bagging of the other family’s birds and our own. I had hoped I’d come away from this with the feeling yes, I can do this myself next time – but, well, no. It seemed just too gruesome and unpleasant for me. And that’s absolutely no criticism of Bruce and Tom; they handled the birds professionally and well, the end came swiftly … it’s just the nature of the procedure. I’m too squeamish.

But, unsettling as it all may be, we now have 24 home-grown chickens in the freezer, with an average weight of 5 ½ pounds (and the largest nearly 7 pounds – a “company” bird, for sure!). As best I can figure the cost, between purchasing chicks and grain and paying for processing, these carcasses come at a $3 per pound cost – not bad, I’d say, for organic free-ranged chicken that also feasted on grass, bugs, hornworms, clover, leftover tomatoes and lettuce and cabbage and turnips. (Take a look at the supermarket price of “all-natural” chicken breasts sometime!)

There are ways to lower that final cost, for sure: Bruce clued me in yesterday on a feed store that sells organic grains 20% cheaper than where I’ve been buying them. There are articles online about purchasing your own food-grade grain ingredients and mixing them yourself, for even greater savings. Some folks are growing some of their own feed grains; flint corn, for example, is as easy to grow as sweet corn. Letting the birds forage for all or most of their food lowers the feed costs considerably, but you need to have enough proper fencing and to keep moving them around your pasture, unless you are able to let them roam completely freely (Tom does this with his birds, but says they end up smaller). And, of course, you can process them yourself; that saves nearly a third of the final cost.

But as far as I’m concerned, if we should choose to raise another meat flock next year, I’ll willingly pay these guys to dispatch them for me. For now, I’ve got to go make some chicken leg broth …