Best practices for ethical meat birds raising

[iwltfum]

Haha oh no did I actually send that last message? I must have had a lunchtime panic attack and forgot I was going to delete that triggered and irrelevant comment about broiler customers. Lol.
Let's back way up - if I may? Ethical really depends on whose perspective you're prioritizing right? Are we talking about animal wellbeing, environmental impacts, personal finances, consumer values, etc? The answer of "what's the most ethical" shifts depending on what you are most concerned about.

 

[No Coop No Problem]

You can say that again! Customers are the worst, that's why I stopped selling my broilers. I had scaled up to 600+ pasture raised day-range broilers (freedom rangers) per season and came to the conclusion after 5 or 6 years of that, that those people are not worth it. I am worth it. My family is worth it, but I will never sell one again.

Same attitude I have with my chickens. I have never sold eggs nor meat, and only a small handful of chickens over all the years. The grocery store could never match the quality of food my chickens produce and no customer can possibly comprehend that

Selling any chicken product makes no sense until I can personally meet all the calorie needs of my family, and even then I don't want to deal with people expecting grocery store factory-farmed prices for my actually free-ranged chickens

 

[Tex452]

I’m incubating eggs from friends and family, whatever they have, RIR, black australorps leghorn, I don’t care, I will butcher the cockerels and give the pullets to my egg suppliers if they want them, the Yeild isn’t nearly as much meat as the Cornish cross, but the meat is delicious, even the leghorn.
I did buy some New Hampshire red in order to get some roosters for my egg suppliers if they want them.
Right now I’m feeding 51 chicks.

 

[Chicks Creek]

Quality generally refers to how nutritious the meat is. Pasture raised chickens are much high quality than cage raised birds. Chickens that can eat grass, and bugs, are higher quality than birds that only eat processed feed.
We are what we wat, and the same applies to chickens.
Pasture raised birds might have more chewy meat than industrial broilers. This is because the muscles of a free bird are stronger than those of a caged bird, therefore they could be harder to chew. That is a sign of quality! We had way too many grocery store rats complaining that the meat of our free range chickens is harder than the consistency of industrial broilers, which is basically the consistency of something that has been dead and forgotten in the back of the fridge for at least 3 months.

We just processed our first batch and it went well, considering the task at hand. We learned a lot along the way. I'm glad you mentioned consistency. We let ours go a bit past 8 weeks because they were still so small. We had a lot of cold rainy weather here at the start of spring and I think they were converting food to heat instead of mass. They weren't as tender as I was expecting. I attributed that to age, though. I'd love to free range, both our meaties and our layers during the day, but I'm so paranoid about predators.

 

[Chicks Creek]

He needs to start hunting turkeys too! Something to do in the spring and fantastic meat as well. Some people dislike wild turkey, and its definitely very different than a Butterball. But prepared right, I prefer it to domestic turkey

We've seen turkeys on our trail cams, it's definitely something he wants to try!

 

[Chicks Creek]

I was given 7 one week old CX this year. I gave them to broody chicken and turkey.
They free range during the day. The CX will go about a 100 ft from the coop.
The brn is a poult that is about the same age
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If you don't mind my asking, how do you free range? I'd love to but we live on 9.5 acres of mostly wooded land and I'm so so paranoid about predators!

 

[Molpet]

If you don't mind my asking, how do you free range? I'd love to but we live on 9.5 acres of mostly wooded land and I'm so so paranoid about predators!

You are correct to be worried about predators. It's part of free ranging. Not for the faint of heart.
It's similar to locking your kids in a safe room and have a limited life. Or let them live, taking chances driving a car, getting bullied at school etc.
First few years I had a good dog. When he passed I have had lots of troubles.
So now I have 2x the number of birds to supply my needs. Well more than that. I have 40+ chicken hens , 10 roosters ( some are old and not breeding), 10 turkey hens , 3 toms.
Since the start of covid, I have trapped over 145 racoons and probably the same in opossums, a couple skunks. Stupid neighbor feeding the wildlife for something to watch. Then they go up north to their cabin. They food runs out and the hungry horde descends on the poultry buffet. They feed the bears up there even though they have been told of the bears that had to be killed because of their actions.
last year was the worse with a red fox. I was in the house for an hour and can out to 8 bodies one missing and one who I had to put down a few days later.
This spring it was a grey fox but I was out there and it didn't get any.
Coyotes I have managed to scare enough that they go around the place during the day.

 

[aimee750]

You can always do tractors and electric netting to protect from most predators. We do that with our red broilers (because I can't stand to look at cx). It works very well for us.