Posted by zog
on May 22, 2009, 5:14 pm
Dang it. Just got the word, we have to get rid of all our birds. A mile away, way the heck over the opposite side of the farm, is a broiler bird operation, which is primarily what this farm does. I do "other", fix fences, watch the beefers, do most of the outside mowing, etc and fix equipment, ie, I DON'T work with the commercial birds and rarely go over to that side of the farm for that matter. Doesn't matter. Joe boss just got told by his suppliers of birds***that our little flock can't exist on the same property because "it might spread disease". Of course, our outside birds are healthy as all get out, and they have no answer to all the thousands of *wild* birds that are free to go wherever they want to go, but that doesn't matter. Dang it, we have over 70 cluckers now and some new babies and one broody hen sitting on eggs now. That's a lot of meat and eggs we have to give up, plus it is *fun*, helps make what we do here tolerable.
***Commercial operations work like this: the actual farmers DON'T own the birds they grow, they are "contract growers". All the baby birds and feed etc, are supplied, then at harvest they give so much per harvestable bird after expenses of paying for the feed and the big electric, water and propane bills and his labor for his farmers he needs. 99% of the chicken meat and eggs are grown in the US via similar contracts, and there are roughly a half a dozen big poultry operations out there. They send out what are called "field managers" who help supervise the operations. We live on the road they travel and they have seen our little flock behind the fence, so he got told we had to lose them "or else" no more contracts.
152
Message Thread:
« Back to thread