Debeaking at McMurray?

[chickerdoodle]

Quote:
You actually have a good point.

I am joining a local group of community folks who either pay or barter for foods and services. My pullets haven't even started to lay yet but I don't have to bring product to the table--I can barter other services. Its a bit experimental and is just getting off the ground in this neighborhood but the idea seems palatable to me. I also like to support local stores so going to a local butcher is fine but not many left! There are larger organic stores who buy organic meats locally so that may be an option too.

 

[crossedwires]

local barter schemes are great, most small farms kind of operate on informal barter systems. like we give another farm down the road the odd chicken and a dozen eggs a week and we get to use his tanaliser a couple of times a year when we recote the chicken sheds

there are many examples of this on farms and i strongly belive in going back a few decades to a time people did favours for favours and helped one another out, the reason there arnt many local butchers is purely because people stopped using them in favour of big stores.............. we are used to eating what the stores sell but if you think about it you have lost so much, there was a time you could buy local cheese that realy was local and made on a small farm with a totaly unique taste for example. meat in a butcher had more fat on it and was generaly hung longer to mature. the animal it came from was older and hadnt been forced raised therefore the qualiaty of the meat was better.
chicken actualy tasted like... well chicken, instead of a bland non discript taste you get in stores theese days. the problem isnt just people being lazy but the tendency to quickly forget just how good things can taste, once you start buying quick produced high intensity produce with less flavour you get used to it quickly and the desire to spend a little extra time effort and money in sourcing good produce goes away.
the farm i run i haved lived on all my life, its in a very rural place in a fantastic part of the uk. my familly have had the same farm now for around 350 years!! sadly i will be the last generation to farm here, another 2-3 years and i doubt the farm will be viable anymore. despite every effort to diversify we strugle to make it pay. we hatch many many types of bird both rare breeds and comercial stock, we hatch birds for the pet trade such as budgies and parrots etc, we even raise birds of pray for relocation and population schemes such as for the red tailed kite wich had become exstinct in the uk. yet year on year we face greater and greater pressures. feed prices so high that if feed isnt weighed accurately per bird then you face a per bird loss of profit. have a few fox's pay a visit and no profit that month. new work regulations dont help and the fact i now have to pay someone a full time wage just to purely do movement paperwork etc is riduculous.
then here in the uk our bigest problem so far this year is fuel prices, they are so high even for agri disel that we have had to introduce very strict guidlines for using the tractors and farm machinery. i have a few paddocks that are due to be cut they arnt of high enough quality for hay or silage but the paddocks could do with a cut so predetors lurking could be spotted (the grass is 4-5 feet tall) but to cut and bail and cart away grass from 30 acres of resting land costs an astronomical amout in fuel so its gets left so we can afford the wage bill.
anyway this isnt meant to be a rant just simply asking people to think about what they pay for food but more importantly where they get it from, try going to a farm gate and asking if they sell meat, i am willing to bet you can find farms all over the place with a bit of effort that will sell you top quality produce and in my experiance some are ven cheaper brought from the gate than the big stores!! buying this way is a win win situation and you never know you just might be helping save a long established family run business