This year's batch of broiler chicks will be arriving any day now. Got the email from the hatchery this morning that they have been shipped. Most likely I'll get a call from my local post office about 6:00 a.m. tomorrow telling me to come get them ASAP (chicks are extremely loud in their shipping box). I'm so excited!
Last year, I raised only a few broilers, as family interest in butchering chickens has become practically non-existent. It's not a glamorous job, it's kind of smelly (wet chicken feathers, eww!), and who wants to smell wet dead chicken on their hands for several days after the deed has been done. So, I only raised what I felt I could butcher completely by myself.
We ate those in about two months. Then, it was back to 'store chicken' for the first time in years. What a disappointment that was! It was pale, it was tasteless, it had a texture akin to oatmeal (which is okay for oatmeal, but meat should be a bit firmer than that!).
Early this spring I heard that a new poultry processor was opening up not ten miles from me. Not a huge corporate one for the industrial food supply, but a small, family owned one for all us homesteading types and backyard chicken raisers. Oh happy day! I will willingly pay $3 a bird processing in order to have some decent chicken on my table rather than that bland mush that came from a package marked 'chicken' at the grocery store.
So, I ordered 50 broilers to arrive in mid-July (in years past I've found if I get the chicks then, I usually don't have to provide a heat lamp--I put the brooder on the west wall inside the barn, providing radiant heat all night, thus saving some money on raising them). My mouth watered, tasting the true taste of chicken, as I clicked on 'confirm and pay'. In just 6-8 short weeks, we shall have delicious, real chicken on our dinner plates again!
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