processing in small numbers

[plantguy90]

I was wondering how small farmers get their chickens to market. Easy enough to process chickens for own consumption, but if you had a few extra you were looking to sell, how do you find a local butcher, processor? What are the legalities?

 

[SoJoChickens]

Try asking at your local feed store. They may know who does processing in your area.

 

[dancingbear]

Are you wanting to find a processor, or be a processor? Or sell the birds you raise? You might check with your county extension office, and the local Chamber of Commerce. Both are great resources for info.
You can also google USDA fill in your state, and find some info there.

 

[plantguy90]

I wanted to sell a few birds, but didn't want to go as far as becoming a registered poultry grower... I will check the local Ag Dept and my feed suppliers.

 

[phoenixmama]

I have a listing on Local Harvest. I don't raise and sell nearly as many as some people on here. There isn't a single meat processor in my state that will do chickens, so I do them myself. In Arizona, as long as I don't raise more than 1000 birds/year and do not sell them across state lines, I can do what I'm doing without having to answer to any government agency or without having to have licensing or insurance.

 

[dancingbear]

Find out if your state (Which is what, BTW? You can add it in you profile so folks can see what neck of the woods you live in, it makes it easier to give advice that may actually be relevant) abides by the federal exemption rules for small producers, or if they trump them with state regs that are so onerous and expensive to follow that you can't legally sell your birds. That's what they what they do here in KY, they don't want small producers to be able to sell meat of any kind.

Even if you jump through all the hoops and use the mobile processing unit, they have some absurd rules like this: With birds processed in KY, you can only keep and sell part of the giblets. You can keep the heart and liver, but you have to throw away the gizzard. Store bought chickens processed of-of-state and shipped in, can have gizzards. They even sell packages of gizzards at the grocery. But cross the state line into KY, suddenly the gizzards are dangerous, and illegal to keep and sell.

It's stupid and crazy. I hope your state is more reasonable. Good luck to you!

 

[Buck Creek Chickens]

It really depends on your state, here in WI you can process (home or a butcher) and sell up to a 1000 birds off your property, but if you go to a farmers market you need to have your birds processed at a state inspected place with the inspector on premise during processing. then labled and so on and so on.....

 

[jaku]

I go with the Joel Salatin method of pre-selling live birds, offering processing as a courtesy. Doing it that way, you have to sell by the bird, not the pound, and you can't sell processed birds out of your freezer. All the birds I sell are sold before they even get to my house. Michigan has pretty strict laws, and the MDA guy admitted that this method got around their rules.

 

[plantguy90]

Ok, I live in CA. And have no idea how strict they are here.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

I don't want to sound like I'm steriotyping here, but I find that oriental people like to buy live food. White and American Indians like fresh eggs. I don't know what the Mexicans and African Americans like, because I never had one for customers. But if you can get the right oriental connections, you might not have to process your extra roosters. You could just put a price on them and sell. A lot of times different heritages affect how we live.