What do you sell your meat birds for?

[hinkjc]

If they are going to help dress/clean them, then give them a discount. $2.50 a lb is quite reasonable for pasture and natural grain fed chicken, loved by humans for their short lives.

 

[CHIC]

I live in Va. Where could I look on the internet to find the legalities? In roanoke, there is a very well known farmers market. I loooove it. I would love to set up with fresh chicken. I wonder how people show them. Wouldn't they need to be cold or frozen?......

 

[kingmt]

Quote:
I'm the other way. I hate the taste of store chicken & always said that I hated chicken until I raised them for my family & found out that I like them. I have a good sized family & a low income so there isn't 5 breast left after the kids eat but my wife's jaw dropped after I cleaned my plate & started picking the carcass.

Quote:
If I felt the need to display them I would take the top off a cooler & put a piece of Plexiglas over it.

ETA: You should rotate out your displayed bird every hour or about also to keep it cold.

 

[robbdebbie]

The guy brings a very small chest freezer and plugs it in. They should be frozen in a freezer. You can put up a sign or something. I do know that Virginia is very strict when it comes to live poultry testiing, so they might be a little harder on you there. Look up the department of agriculture.

 

[Winsor Woods]

Quote:
I'm the other way. I hate the taste of store chicken & always said that I hated chicken until I raised them for my family & found out that I like them. I have a good sized family & a low income so there isn't 5 breast left after the kids eat but my wife's jaw dropped after I cleaned my plate & started picking the carcass.

Quote:
If I felt the need to display them I would take the top off a cooler & put a piece of Plexiglas over it.

ETA: You should rotate out your displayed bird every hour or about also to keep it cold.

I'm sure you realize this but I was speaking more from a "fullness" feeling or energy derived from the food feeling than I was about taste. I think homegrown tastes better too, but I've always loved to eat chicken. I just need MUCH less homegrown chicken to feel full and energized.

Dan

 

[HidingInTheHenHouse]

I sell mine for $3 a pound. We sold out of our last batch in less than a week, and that was with just word of mouth, and selling to family, friends, and my church. We continue to get people asking for more, so we're doing one more batch this fall. We're hoping to break into the more "high end" consumer market, you know, the ones that are already paying a high price for the organic chicken in the stores.

Sure, people sometimes turn their nose up at the price, but I am not making a huge profit; just barely covering costs. And I always ask them, "Do you know how that average supermarket chicken was raised?" Most people have no idea what they are eating from the store.

 

[kingmt]

Quote:
I know what your saying & not arguing. I was just complimenting the bird for it's taste. I would never set down & eat more then one piece of a chicken from a store because it taste so nasty. I haven't liked the taste of chicken since about 8 years old until I raised or own. I have ate other breads that I thought was better then the stores but still not good. Looking back on them I probably didn't do them right was the problem.

I tried to skin the first birds & found out it was much easier to pluck them in my opinion & much cleaner. The skin keeps it moist while cooking & even if you don't like the skin you can just pull it off for a clean carcass of meat after cooking. Then it took me a few times to get the scald right & learn how it was done (I even half cooked a bird one time trying to scald it).

The plucker I built does a very nice job of removing most of the feathers & makes it a much easier job.

 

[UncleHoot]

I sell mine for $2/lb. With my current setup, I can actually make about $1 to $2 per chicken with a 5.5 lb average dressed weight. I have mine processed locally, but I don't do it myself. My current crop of Rangers will be selling for $2.10/lb, simply because they eat a bit more.

As far as legal issues, it's almost always considered "ok" to have people place orders ahead of time, then pick-up and pay for the procesed chickens on the day they are processed. Whether or not this is technically legal is perhaps debatable, but unless you end up poisoning a bunch of people, I'm certain you won't have any thing to worry about. However, if you start selling chickens out of your freezer a month later, or take them somewhere else to sell (away from your home/farm), then there are certain regulations that come into play - chiefly that you use a facility with a USDA inspector.