Meat Chickens

Over the last few years, there seems to be a volatility in the meat industry. The mainstream media wants us to believe that meat is bad for you. They are pushing fake meat that has 50 ingredients and calling it ‘healthy’. They try to make us believe that raising beef is the cause of climate change. There are rumors of meat being made of plastic, or being dyed to make it look more appealing, etc. 

If you’re like me, you’re looking at all this and wondering how you can trust what’s in the grocery store. The conclusion I’ve come to is that…You can’t! Which is why we started raising our own meat chickens.

Where it all began

As we have been on our own health journey, we have come to value quality food. As Alaskans, we enjoy wild game that hasn’t been exposed to vaccinations or chemicals. We enjoy wild salmon, halibut, shrimp, etc that hasn’t been handled by anyone but us. 

Now, of course we don’t have control over the ocean, rivers, or land that these animals spend their life in/on, but I think we can all agree that there’s a good chance this meat is a much better product than what’s coming through the meat industry. 

In pursuit of a high quality product and to rely less on the grocery store, we decided to start raising our own chickens. Here is a recap of our first year experience. 

Meat Chicken Breed Choice

The Cornish Cross is the most popular meat chicken to raise, likely because it produces the most meat in the shortest amount of time. Many people don’t like to raise them, because they aren’t sustainable and they can grow too fast and can have health problems. A huge conversation could be had about all the pros and cons for raising this breed, but I’m not going to debate that in this post. 

My primary preference would be to raise something that is sustainable, for example a Freedom Ranger. However, living in Alaska makes it a lot harder to choose another breed. We have an extremely short summer and quality feed can get really expensive so moving towards another breed that may take 4+ weeks longer to butcher isn’t really something I’m open to at this point. If we lived in the lower 48, I would definitely consider moving toward one of the Ranger breeds, which is a more sustainable breed. 

Year 2 changes

We knew going into this year that we were going to raise more birds and thus would need a larger chicken tractor. I had some requests but Jimmy came up with the design himself. Initially I was really bummed that I couldn’t move it by myself, but we ended up having some bear activity on our property this summer so I’m really glad that our tractor is heavier than most. I used the 4 wheeler winch to pull the tractor around our yard. 

We ordered 52 birds this year and 48 made it to butcher day. We lost two as young chicks and 2 just before butcher day. One of them got hung up on a feeder and must have broken its neck and I’m not sure what happened with the other one, organ failure would be my guess. Although it’s disappointing and sad to lose chickens that close to butcher, I am pretty pleased with getting 48 of 52 to maturity. 

Butchering meat birds

Our first year, we had a company do the butchering for us. We wanted to make sure that raising meat birds was going to be something we did long term before we invested in the tools to butcher ourselves. 

Since we can see ourselves doing this for a while, we invested in what we needed to make the process go smoothly. If you want to check out our recommended tool list, you can find that here. 

The process of butchering meat birds

For our first year butchering, I am really impressed with how well we did! My husband Jimmy, my dad and I were able to process 48 birds in 3 hours, which I think is pretty good for first timers! My dad has processed hundreds of pheasants in his lifetime so he was a ton of help! That didn’t count set up or clean up (just culling, defeathering, gutting, removing feet, etc). 

When you butcher chickens it’s important to let the meat rest for at least 48 hours. I don’t know much about the science behind it but it allows any rigor mortis to run its course and results in more tender chicken. I can attest to this because our first year I only let them rest for roughly 20 hours and the meat definitely wasn’t as tender as this year. So this first part of the process was culling to getting whole birds into coolers with water/ice. 

After 48 hours had passed, we broke down some of the birds and packaged whole birds. This process took a few hours. 

Thoughts on year 2

Overall, I am very pleased with the experience of raising meat chickens. One of my favorite things about it is having to get outside first thing in the morning to feed them. Rain or shine, they get me outside! Although raising a lot more birds this year was more work (hauling feed, moving the tractor, etc) I really am hooked on being part of growing and raising my own food. 

To anyone who might ask if I recommend it, it’s a resounding yes from me! You don’t have to have a ton of space, you don’t have to start out raising a whole year’s worth of chicken, you can just start on a small scale and get the hang of it. But I promise you, you won’t regret getting more involved with where your food comes from. 

Now the most common question of all…

Cost: Is it worth it to raise meat chickens? 

Generally my answer is no. You likely aren’t going to be able to compete with conventionally raised chicken. HOWEVER, usually if you’re raising meat chickens it’s because you are aware of how inhumane conventional farming is or you want a better product than what the cheapest chicken at the store is. 

So in that case, I think you can compete. I have given some examples below. It’s hard to compare because not everything is ‘apples to apples’ feed wise. It would be an exorbitant amount of money for me to raise organic meat chickens in Alaska. So I feed no corn/no soy, which isn’t the same type of marketing they use in the grocery store. Please keep in mind, these are Alaska prices! So if you are in the lower 48 chances are, you will be able to reduce this cost significantly!  But at least it will give you an idea of where things land.  

If you are interested in further information about meat chickens, please see my FAQ post here.