So You Want to Be A Chicken Farmer?

[Draggingtree]

So You Want to Be A Chicken Farmer?

By Gracy Olmstead • December 28, 2013, 9:00 AM

 

Jordan Tan

 

Forrest Pritchard writes humorously and truthfully at Smith Meadows about the real-life challenges of chicken farming. For the aspirational poultry farmer, this post is a healthy dose of realism:

 

Can you feed 500 hens at dawn, ring an egg-eater’s neck at noon, and shoot a fox at dusk? Can you ensure that your hens have fresh water on zero degree mornings, as well as 100 degree days? Are you a Type-A time manager who can properly introduce new flocks every six months, while processing older birds the week they turn one year old? In short, do you ‘have it in you’ to perform the unsexy aspects of chicken farming?

 

Pritchard’s honesty is invaluable in an age where many are gravitating back to an agrarian lifestyle. It’s easy to see the farming lifestyle as pastoral and quaint, “simple” and lovely, while glossing over its dirty work. But it’s no easy thing to build a chicken farm, and Pritchard makes that clear.

 

Some time ago, my farmer grandpa decided to retire. He gave my younger brothers, both in high school at the time, all his chickens.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/so-you-want-to-be-a-chicken-farmer/

[Pepper]

@Draggingtree

 

 

It seems there was a Texas Aggie who wanted to start a chicken farm of his very own. He was sent to a local hatchery to purchase some chicks to start the enterprise. He went in and purchased 500 fine White Rocks chicks to start the farm up. The next week he came back to the hatchery and purchased 500 top quality Rhode Island Reds chicks. The following week it was 500 Cornish chicks and so on and so on for many weeks. Finally, the hatchery man could stand it no longer and said, "Wow you must be starting a huge poultry farm with all of these chicks!" "Not so big really, "said the city slicker, "I'm just having a little trouble with this first crop. I can't tell if I'm planting them too deep or too close together."