Tomorrow is the big day. Two lucky roosters will wake at dawn to stretch their wings and try out their new crows for the last time. They've had an astronomically better life than the majority of chickens in this country. They were hatched out naturally by mom, raised by mom, and have spent the past four months happily wandering around the yard eating grass, grubs, and delectables from the holy compost pile. They've actually been able to see real daylight! What a concept! At four months of age, they're almost old geezers by modern day chicken farm standards.

We have a total of 9 chickens that will be processed(nice term, eh?) over the next month, but we're starting with just two this weekend. When I was very young, my parents slaughtered our own chickens, and one of the earliest memories I have at that age is of my mom sitting on a bucket, plucking chickens that were hanging from the truck tailgate. However, my parents never really liked the mess and labor that went along with processing your own, and they had stopped probably before I even reached elementary school.

If you ask my parents about it now, they'll say it's just easier to buy a chicken from the store, and they're right. Chicken is cheap. I can buy an 8 lb. "natural" broiler (whatever that really means) for sometimes as low as $7, and I know I can get multiple meals out of that $7. So, yeah, it's cheap and easy. What isn't easy is trying to forget where that chicken came from. The likely conditions that chicken lived in are some of the major reasons I was vegan for 10 years(more on that another time). Conditions aside, most of the chickens we buy at the store are Cornish X broilers...a chicken hybrid that was bred to turn into an extremely heavy full grown fowl in just 8 weeks(unlike heritage breeds). Often the chickens hearts and hips can't keep up with this accelerated growth, and so they spend a lot of their time "down", laying in their own shit. Anyone who has ever changed a diaper knows what happens to a child's skin if left in prolonged contact with feces. Imagine spending your short life like this. There is a turkey broiler at the horse farm I work at on the weekends. He was found by the road near the Tyson processing plant, so he must have somehow fallen from a truck. Someone brought him back to the horse farm about a month ago, and placed him in the chicken pen. My boss says she has never seen him stand up and walk, so suspected he had a broken leg. I checked him out, and nothing's broken. Sadly, since he's a broiler he has a hard time standing for more than a couple minutes.(He really just needs to be put out of his misery.) Broilers are bad news. In addition to all of this, the majority of livestock in this country are kept alive on grain, which is another long rant I could go on, but won't. Basically, it's not good for chickens, and it's really not good for the nutritional makeup of the meat. THEN there's the ecological impact from these massive farms....

Of course, there are options available for some of us who don't want to support that kind of chicken farming. The Belmont Butcher (on Belmont in the museum district) is an amazing source for local grass fed meat. You can join a local CSA, and support farmers that are using sound practices. You can buy from a buddy out in such-and-such county, who keeps just a small flock. You can say fuck-it-all to pastoralism, and hunt your meat. You can not eat meat (but I would advise against that. It's good for you. It really is.). Lucky for me, I have enough of a yard, and kind enough neighbors, that I can raise my own. We'll eat these chickens over the next 4 or so months, and by the time we're out of chicken, we'll have some more ready to go into the freezer (we have two hens setting right now).

I'll probably be posting some pics from processing, as I've had a few people ask me how it's done. So, just be aware of that in case you don't want to see it. Wish me luck!