Did you say chickens?

I plop down on the couch and run my hands down my face feeling the fatigue set in from rising at 5:00 a.m.  I quickly notice the difference in my hands as they rub like sand paper against my face.  I feel a bit proud of it thinking back to how soft they were just a few short weeks ago.

Sweet Thang peeks out the primed front door and flips on the porch light as a flash of lightning brightens the sky, "I hope the other cat doesn't get taken tonight.  I'm sad for the girls."  I glance up to her and give a half smile trying to figure out what could have happened to the black and white kitten the girls call Miss Kitty.  Could it have been coyotes or maybe it climbed up in Aunt T's car.  Maybe I should give her a call.

Nothing like an ice cold glass of milk to think over my day.  Sweet Thang just announced she's heading off to bed.  My mind quickly switches on how to get my brooder built so I can order my first batch of chicks.  hmmm... should I start with 50 or 100?  Cornish?

It shouldn't be too difficult to market pastured poultry after reading about what a supermarket chicken goes through.  That's my angle... Get people to see the sad shape that their store bought chickens are in and  our chickens sell themselves. 

Think about it!  Who wants to eat a chicken that has been confined with thousands of other birds.  Given tons of medication like antibiotics, growth hormones, and arsenic to increase their appetite.  Yummy, Yummy meat toxins!  Feathers, eyes, beaks, nostrils - nothing is exempt from the layers of fecal dust stirred up in their tiny confinements.  Not only do they live in fecal dust but that fecal dust gets in their feed, water and lungs.  This filth is why the birds receive as many as 40 chlorine baths.  Yeah, that's right your chicken you buy at the store has been medicated, poisoned, and bathed in chlorine 40 times.  I wonder how much of that makes it into the meat?  Kind of like a good marinade, on steroids...literally!

The chicken processing is even worse.  I won't go into the gruesome details but lets just say the chicken is in filth from start to finish...  I think if most people knew what they were eating they wouldn't give it to their dogs.

But there is another option...  Fresh raised pastured poultry...  I'm reading a great book by Joel Salatin on how to begin a pastured poultry farm.  This guy lays bare his entire system.  I love systems.  Not only that but his model removes all medications, poisons , allows the birds to do what they do naturally (forage) in open space. 

Next time "You are what you eat"  learn about what your chicken eats and why pastured poultry is healthier for you. 

"You going to be much longer?" calls a voice from the bed.  "I'm on my way."  I yell back.

Good Night!