The cost of chicken...

Well, here we go... Who knows the cost of chicken at the grocery store? Last I remember, it could be bought for somewhere around .89 cents per pound on sale. 89 cents!! How in the world can you grow a chicken and even cover the cost of feeding it for that price?!? And that, my friends, is what it comes down to. Feeding and caring for that chicken. There is plenty of reading to be done on the matter. "Poultry Prisons" is a quick read and "The blind, footless chickens of the future CAFOs" is another. Did you know that the USDA will soon allow chicken from China? Chinese chicken? I don't even enjoy talking or debating the subject, cause it just makes me sick. I did, however, want to touch on the matter of why does chicken raised by smaller farms cost so much more? Quality is a good word to describe it. Quality of food. Quality of treatment.

The life of a pasture raised chicken is miles different, then that of your grocery store chicken. First, it lives outside, in clean fresh air. Second, it gets to be a chicken and eat the bugs that hop around. Chickens also like to eat grass, which is not a widely known fact, but, yes, they do and they love it!
 Quality of food. Chickens will eat just about anything you give them, so you can imagine if you are trying to produce the cheapest bird, you aren't going to be feeding them well. A pasture raised bird not only gets to eat the grass and bugs where they live, but also has fresh food brought to them daily.
Quality of treatment. These are living, breathing animals we are talking about and should be cared for as such. That is something we over look every time we buy a store bought chicken. We vote and say its okay every time we buy a bird treated that way. It looks so harmless just buying a chicken, but we are saying what your doing is good and I support you.

 With that said, vote for someone you know who is doing a good job. Go to the farmers market, visit a farm. See what is done and how the animals are treated and what they are fed. It matters! Make a difference. And just remember, you really do get what you pay for!

~Ruth