Meat Chicks on the Farm – 14 Reasons to Raise Meat Chickens
Have you ever wanted to try farming, but you don’t have a lot of time, money, or space? Raising meat chicks is a great place to start. There is not a lot of equipment costs and the time commitment is relatively short. Therefore, if you decide meat chickens aren’t for you, you can sell your supplies after you butcher them and still have a freezer full of meat!
Spring is a great time to give raising meat chicks a try. However, you can raise meat chickens all the way through the late fall depending on where you live.
From diet diversification to entertainment, there are many reasons to raise spring chicks on the farm. There are six main reasons to raise your own chicks and eight more secondary reasons for a total of 14 reasons to raise spring meat chicks on your farm.
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Why Chickens?
You may be wondering why I am talking about chickens instead of beef. After all this website is called Cattle Upon a Hill. However, one important thing to remember when farming is diversification. Some years the cattle market isn’t great, so having another source of income is wise. You may not be able to raise enough chickens to support your family financially. but it is a start! Raising meat chickens is an important skill to earn some extra money on the farm. I have been able to sell enough extra chickens to more than cover the cost of raising the chickens and fill our own freezer with meat.
Buying and Selling Chicks
If possible, I suggest that you purchase 100-day old broilers from the local co-op. Buying the chicks in quantity saves money. Usually, if you buy from the co-op the shipping is free. After you order from the co-op, they are shipped to the post office where you pick them up.
You may not need 100 chickens for your family or have room to raise that many chickens or store them in your freezers. Whole chickens take up a lot of room in a freezer. I have room for around 50 chickens in my freezer. I try to prepare a whole chicken each week.
Selling Extra Chicks
You can sell the extra, started chickens on Craigslist or in Facebook Groups. Through Craigslist, I have developed a partnership with a retired gentleman, who doesn’t have a place to raise baby chicks. As soon as the chicks don’t need the brooder light, he purchases about twenty from me. He pays me enough to cover the entire amount of starter feed up to that point. It benefits both of us. The remaining 30 chicks that I don’t need, I sell on Craigslist or raise, butcher, and sell, give as gifts to family and friends. You will always be able to sell excess meat chickens.
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6 reasons to raise spring chicks on the farm
1. Diet Diversification
The main reason you should raise meat chickens is to add variety to your family’s diet. The goal is to raise as much of your own food as possible and meat chickens is a great and easy place to start.
We try to raise almost all of our own meat to eat. Since we are beef farmers, we eat a whole lot of beef. Don’t get me wrong, I love everything beef, but eating it every day gets boring.
Enter chickens! You will never taste a better chicken, than one raised “on pasture” through your own blood, sweat, and sometimes, even tears. In my humble opinion, the meat even looks more golden from all the fresh air and sunshine.
The diet of a free-range chicken also consists of grass and other greens, food scraps, bugs, and many microorganisms the chickens scratch from the ground. Free-range chickens are living their chicken life the way God created them to live by scratching, running around, stretching their wings, soaking up the sunshine and interacting with each other. All these activities create healthy, happy, stress-free chickens.
2. Healthy Meat
Boneless, skinless chicken breast. It seems that every chicken recipe calls for them. It is easy and fast in this lightning-fast world we live in. Unfortunately, boneless, skinless chicken is not as healthy as chicken with the skin on and bones in. Chicken skin has healthy fat, adds moisture and flavor to the meat. The bones contain vitamins and minerals that our bodies need. I am not suggesting you eat chicken bones, rather make broth from them.
Cutting up a whole chicken can be intimidating. Check out my How to Cut up a Whole Chicken Video for step by step instructions.
Another benefit of cooking whole chickens is organ meat, which has many health benefits. The strong taste may take some getting used to.
A third benefit, as I mentioned above, is using the carcass to make bone broth. Bone broth has many health benefits. It contains collagen which benefits hair, skin, and nails. Bone broth can be consumed plain or used as a soup base. Homemade broth is chemical-free, unlike many store-bought varieties. It is also very inexpensive and easy to make. Making it in the slow cooker draws out the vitamins and minerals from the bones. It can also be canned or frozen for future use.
3. Clean Meat
When raising your own meat chicks on the farm, you know exactly what they are fed. If you prefer organic, you can buy organic feed. I personally don’t buy organic. Instead, I use a commercial meat producer for the first 4-6 weeks, then I switch to a ground corn mixture we produce on the farm.
Another thing I feed them is extra raw milk straight from our cow. You can read more about keeping a milk cow. We can’t begin to drink all the milk our dairy cow produces so we give it to our meat chicks. They love it. It is a great source of protein for the chicks.
As I mentioned earlier, free-range chickens eat a variety of foods in their diets: bugs, greens, microorganisms. Their diet benefits their owners in other ways too. Chickens will eat food scraps such as fruit and vegetable peelings, eggshells, meat scraps, pretty much anything except citrus. One of the chickens’ favorite treats is fly larvae and eggs. Ok, that may not be pleasant to think about, but it helps reduce the fly population. If you have a compost pile, chickens will turn over the compost saving you time and labor.
4. Food Security
If the food supply chain breaks down and the grocery shelves are empty, having a homegrown source of food is like food insurance. Once you learn how to raise, butcher, and prepare chickens, you have food freedom. You do not need to depend on grocery stores to provide your meat. Meat recall- not a problem for you. You know the source of your meat.
5. Entertainment
Raising meat chickens is fun. You will enjoy watching the chicks grow and change. There is also a sense of satisfaction in a job well done. You will definitely appreciate the chicken dinner much more knowing that you raised it from day one.
I love my chickens, which may seem that it would be difficult to kill them, but honestly, I feel like I have given the chickens a good life, not in a factory farm and they are now serving their purpose by feeding my family.
6. Education
If you have children, raising chickens is very educational. It teaches responsibility. Give your child one, five, or ten chickens to care for. Teach the child to feed and water them, clean their pen, monitor the brooder temperature, and make sure the pen is predator-proof. By giving a child a small number of chickens, you can give them full responsibility and if the chicks are neglected and die, it teaches a hard life lesson. Of course, use your own discretion based on the age and maturity level of the child.
The first time a child raises a chicken, it will probably be very difficult for them to see it be butchered. With experience, you will find a balance between farm animals and pets. I remember the first time I gave my son a meat chicken. We ended up keeping it because he loved it so much. Unfortunately, it died over the winter because it couldn’t handle the cold. It was a hard lesson to learn, but a valuable one nonetheless.
Homeschooling
Raising chickens is a biology lesson. After you get used to gutting chickens, (the first few times are difficult) you can look at the internal systems of a chicken. Teach your children the function of each part. You can describe how a mammals system is similar and different.
Raising chickens teaching children where their food comes from. It teaches them to value their food and not to be wasteful with their food. With all the labor and time that they put into raising chickens, they will not waste food.
We homeschool our children and teaching them important life skills through chickens will benefit them throughout their lives. As a child, I didn’t have the opportunity to raise chickens. I didn’t give much thought to where my food came from. I am thankful to have learned this life skill, even if it was later in life. Check out some fun homeschool chicken resources.
If these six reasons haven’t convinced you to raise chickens, here are 8 more reasons why. . .
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1. Most of the supplies can be reused.
Light fixtures, waterer, feeder, cage/coop. Meat chicks are less than $2 a chick. The biggest cost is the feed, but I would estimate you could raise a small batch of chickens for less than $200. Here are some of my favorite supplies.
2. Chickens are Easy to Raise
Honestly, as long as you provide fresh food and water, a warm, dry place to live, chickens will survive and thrive. Most hatcheries will estimate a ten percent mortality rate, but I have never experienced that high of a rate. I lose one or two, but many times they are clearly deformed or weak when they arrive. My biggest problem has been predators. We have raccoons on our farm. Trapping has really helped, but the biggest solution has been purchasing a guardian dog.
3. Chickens don’t require much space
For the first month, they can be in a small cage or brooder. I free range my older chicks in the yard in chicken tractors, chickshaws, or electric netting. I have even raised them in the barn. Think outside the box when housing your chickens.
4. Meat Chickens are not a long term commitment
They can be raised from day-old chick to ready to butcher birds in as little as 12 weeks. The broiler chickens I raise take about 15-20 weeks. If raising meat chickens is not for you, you can sell the supplies and be done.
5. Meat Chickens are easy to handle
It is not like they are a 1200 lb. cow. You can pick up chickens and usually catch them when they escape their enclosure. It is unlikely you will be injured by a meat chicken unless it accidentally flaps its wing in your eye when you catch it.
6. Meat Chickens are easy to process at home
Chickens can be butchered and processed outside quite easily. Watch for a future post about butchering chickens.
You can also find a local processing plant or perhaps Amish farmer to butcher the chickens for you.
7. Baby chicks are cute
This may not be the best reason to buy chickens, but there is something very relaxing about watching baby chicks peck around the farm or take a nap in a happy, little chick pile.
You can read more about raising other farm animals for better reasons than appearance in my beginner’s guide to raising farm animals.
8. Chickens produce manure for the garden
It cannot be directly applied because it is too hot but composted over time, chicken manure is wonderful for the garden.
These are just some of the reasons to raise spring chicks on the farm. There are many other reasons. I hope I have helped convince you to try it out.
Here is what 100 meat chicks look like. Aren’t they cute? Have you ever raised meat chickens? How was your experience? Tell me about it in the comments.
Here from EBA to show my support! What breed do you raise as meat birds? I raise dual purpose breeds but thinking of raising some for meat this year.
Have a wonderful weekend, Em
We raise broilers. I used to raise Cornish Cross, but I think broilers do better as free rangers. Cornish cross are the couch potatoes of chickens. Lol.
Excellent! I agree – skin and bones are so healthy. Raising your own meat chickens also allows the opportunity to use the bones and make homemade bone broth. Yum! Thanks for the great tips and ideas.