We receive lots of emails from people asking lots of questions and one of the main issues that they have is the price. Why should they pay us £6.50 per kg (Price correct 2016) for chicken when they can buy five baby chickens for £10.00! As this question is asked time and time again we thought we would put together some information that we have learnt over the years.
THE QUESTION THAT YOU NEED TO ASK YOURSELF IS HOW CAN WE YOU AS CONSUMER BUY FIVE CHICKENS FOR £10 AND THE FARMER, SLAUGHTER HOUSE, DISTRIBUTOR AND BUTCHER MAKE MONEY??? The answer is simple…..
Commercial farming has now become no more than factories, rearing animals in intensive environments to cope with public demand. In order to do this animals are kept indoors and fed diets to promote quick weight gain and daily antibiotics to counteract coccidiosis and other illnesses that are prevalent in intensive environments. The chickens are given access to controlled amounts of food and water and are kept in well lit sheds for 23 hours a day. This promotes the natural instinct of the animal to eat. The lights are ONLY SWITCHED OFF FOR ONE HOUR in 24 allowing the chickens to sleep for a very short period of time before they are up and eating again. These sorts of factories are able to achieve weights of average 2.2kg at 35 days of age, five weeks, whereas in a natural free range environment it takes us 84 days to receive similar weights. At four weeks of age our chickens our chickens are put out to free range where they spend a further eight weeks.
Baby chickens that are usually between 800g-1.2kg are slaughtered a lot, lot younger.
These animals are kept indoors and the first time that they see natural daylight is when they are caged up ready to be slaughtered, these animals have had no life at all.
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Similarly with red meat we know personally of sheep farms that lamb over Christmas and intensively rear the lambs indoors on high protein diets, similar to the American method of rearing cattle and send them to slaughter ready to be eaten at Easter at just a few months old having never set foot on grass.
Recent studies show close links between antibiotics in the food chain and human resistance. Please click link below for video.
Antibiotic Resistance: The End of Modern Medicine?
So what makes our chicken different?
We receive our chicks as day olds from an Organic source, we teach them to eat and drink as this is the first time that they have any food or water. We keep them in warm sheds so that they can grow their outdoor feathers before transferring them at between 3-4 weeks into their new homes on lush paddocks. They are then free to roam and forage for a further 8-10 weeks before they are taken a few meters to our on farm slaughter house.
They are fed no antibiotics, our land is certified Organic and our feed is all Organic.
Slaughtered UNSTUNNED in our EU Approved slaughterhouse we offer full trace-ability from chick to your dinner!
Our chickens are reared in a Halal and Tayyib Muslim Environment and we have been described as an “Extremely High Welfare Organisation” by the Lead Field Vet at the FSA, (Food Standards Agency).