Year Four at The Cluckery!

March 21, 2025

Welcome to your annual Pastured Poultry letter and order form from the Collins Cluckery!  Folks, spring is in the air! Garlic, chives, and tulips are peeking out in the garden, and it’s time once again to think about stocking your freezers for another year.  I hope you’ve enjoyed my mini-foray into “blogging” and learned a few new skills and recipes you can use and pass on to your families.  It was a joy to put together for you.

I’ll bet your kids remember Bekah and Misty!  Misty is the one with feathers. 😉  He’s about four years old now, and still the Cock of the Walk.  Look at those splendid spurs!  He’s still the friendliest rooster we’ve ever met, a little slower in the cold mornings to brave the outdoors than he used to be, but just as vigilant looking out for his hens, greeting the morning  with his signature crow, and jumping on our shoulders if we bend over!

(If you aren’t sure what “blogging” I’m referring to, I just completed a five-week series full of practical -- and, admittedly, some not-so-practical!!! -- ways to get the most bang for your buck - in cost, flavor, and nutrition - out of our pastured chickens.  If you didn’t receive them and would like to, send me an e-mail.)

We’ve got your chicks ordered!  The first batch arrives in the middle of April - Yikes!  Just seeing that written in words lights a fire under me to get busy.  Over the next month, we’ve got to move the layers back onto pasture, clean out and prepare the brooder to receive the babies, and pull out all of our various chicken tractors to give them the once-over, making sure things are in good order and ready to be subjected to those daily moves around the property.

So, if you’re looking forward to stocking up for another year on delicious and nutritious chicken, fill out the order form and get it back to me as soon as you can.  First come, first serve, but we should have plenty to go around.  We can add a third cycle, if need be.  And we’re adding whole cut-ups!  These aren’t packages of “just breasts” or “just thighs,” although I hope to get there next  year, but whole cut-ups is a start.

Remember that our chickens are NOT “certified organic” or officially-inspected-certified anything.  They are not vaccinated, chlorinated, or fed medicated feed.  They are raised and butchered conscientiously, at a farm you can actually visit, with a process you can actually participate in if you choose.  YOU can see it all, and that is a step above federal inspection.  It is a piece of the larger puzzle of taking your food and your health back into your own hands.  It’s how we eat on our homestead, and if that speaks to your soul, I’d love to be your local chicken lady!

For those who like more detail…

1) On the Farm:  What on earth is a Chicken Tractor?

Every field has its own vocabulary, and pastured poultry is no different.  A “tractor” to facilitate daily moves is a key component of pasturing animals.  People often imagine that I hook a John Deere up to my shelters and move them.  NO!  Loud machinery panics the chickens, a panicked chicken is a stressed chicken, and a stressed chicken is susceptible to sickness. A tractor is defined as “That which draws, or is used for drawing,” so I “draw” the chickens around the yard in their shelter, or their tractor!  Kevin made a dolly that I tip under the back of the tractor; then I go around to the front, grab the handle, and walk backward, “drawing” the chickens after me.  They eagerly follow along, knowing they’ll get fresh pasture just a few feet ahead.  You’ve got to come out and see it!

 “Tractoring” animals also allows us to direct the animals’ manure at a rate the soil can metabolize, thereby continually improving the pasture.  That means every year what your chickens consume is just a little more nutritious than it was the year before. That’s regenerative agriculture, folks, caressing the land rather than ravaging it.  That’s stewardship of the land in action.

2) In the Business:  Jen, your price went up.  Explain, please?

On one hand, I know I don’t need to spend a lot of words explaining a price increase.  We’re all feeling it:  health insurance is through the roof, eggs are out of control. Of course, that applies to the homestead, as well.  Chicken feed, the chicks themselves, litter for the brooder: it’s all gone up.  But that’s life, and we’re all in that boat together.

So, sure, expenses continue to rise.  But that isn’t the only reason for the increase.  One of the main reasons is that I am working to be sure that the Collins Cluckery can be a real, sustainable, far-sighted operation.  We do NOT aim to be “big business,” in competition with the grocery stores.  Honestly, the grocery store is NOT my competitor.  If you’re like us, you feel a little sense of victory when you find a way to source something OUTSIDE of the conventional system, and you’re looking for something the grocery store just doesn’t offer.

But to make sure the Cluckery is sustainable in the long-term, to be certain we can continue to meet the needs of folks who are taking charge of their own health and their own food, we’ve got to charge sustainably, as well.  Sweat equity won’t cut it!  It takes money to run watering systems out to the chickens and to obtain equipment for efficient processing.  And as the kids get older, it is only right to pay them what their labor is worth.  “The labourer is worthy of his reward,” 1 Corinthians 9:11.  Well, I don’t have to tell YOU!  If you’ve come out on processing day, you’ve SEEN the way these kids work!  From Caleb or Brendan at the slaughter station, to Bekah at the scald/pluck station, to Drew my “Master Eviscerator,” these kids are W-O-R-T-H their reward!

 And yet…and yet…it’s no small thing to raise prices.  I totally understand that this increase may not work for some of you, and I am sorry for that.

Please just know that I am not picking numbers willy-nilly.  I’ve been researching the local market, talking to and learning from successful pastured producers both here and across the country, working to make sure I fully understand how to price fairly, in a way that works for a small farm.

For your part, I ask you to remember what we’re offering.  I hope that your experiences coming out to the homestead and, especially, eating our chicken, convince you that it’s worth it.  That you WISH to buy your chickens from people who raise those chickens lovingly, thoughtfully, and who at the same time like to know that their efforts are valued by people who buy into the vision of the Collins Cluckery; where our aim is not just to make a sale TODAY, but also to be here to serve you TOMORROW, if God wills.

3) In the News:  The Avian Flu

This is a big topic all its own, and enough of you have asked about it, that I created a PDF to send out soon.  In brief, the Avian Flu is an influenza virus that can affect any bird flock.  It originates in wild flocks, and this is key:  testing has shown that the death rate in wild birds is a speck compared to the death rate in industrialized birds.  Think about that for a moment. WHY?   Well, wild birds eat what they should.  They exercise constantly; they are not crowded; they are not stressed.  The weak ones die, so weak genetics aren’t passed on.  And this is what we try to recreate in a pastured model.  Good ventilation, good food, low stress, low stocking density (150 chickens compared to 125,000).  We observe individuals, watching for oddities in behavior like silent chickens facing the wall or drooping lethargically with half-closed eyes, things that cannot receive attention at the large scale.

As a member of APPPA (American Pastured Poultry Producers Association), I receive regular updates regarding the impact of this.  And although the information comes to me from a group interested in the pastured poultry perspective, it is a balanced view, including interviews conducted between APPPA representatives and representatives of the USDA and similar agencies.  Watch your e-mail for the PDF, if you would like more information.

4) From the Heart:  Credit Where Credit Is Due

First, I want to thank YOU.  You have so many options, and I can’t express in words how grateful I am that you continue to choose us; to support us in our journey so we can continue to support you in yours.  Thank you for your words of encouragement,  your texts with pictures of the ways you use our chickens, for the notes telling us you won’t be able to go back to store-bought!

But most of all, I want to publicly thank God for his blessing on the Collins Cluckery thus far.  If I had to pick a verse that I think of most often, it is this:  “Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain,” Psalm 127:1.  That verse finds its way into my thoughts, my prayers, and my conversation every season.  We work so hard for your chickens.  We care for them, protect them from predators, and go out pj-clad in the middle of the night in a thunder storm to push straw under the shelters so they can stay dry…but “except the LORD keep the chickens, the farmer waketh but in vain.”  Everything we do, we do with the breath, the bodies, the chickens, the land, and the tools He entrusts to our care. May we be found faithful stewards of His gifts.