This is a story that begins, like so many local controversies, with a post on my local Facebook message board. Last summer, someone posted a photo of a bunch of chickens, perhaps as many as 100, that had been dumped on a road outside town. The hens had obviously been well-cared for, and some of them had even laid eggs in the time between when they’d been dumped and when this local had discovered them.
The inevitable flame war roiled. What kind of bastard abandons helpless animals like that? Residents rallied to rescue the chickens. Accusations flew, and soon a local organic farmer confessed to the dumping. The hens were layers, past their prime, and because our valley lacks any animal carcass recycling facility that could kill and compost 100 chickens, he decided that the best course of action was to release them into the wild where they’d admittedly become bear, hawk and coyote food in a matter of hours or days.
In his words, “So we have these chickens who are noble creatures deserving a noble death and what is more noble than giving them their freedom so they can fend for themselves and often times provide food for the other animals in the wild? Is it not better than being shot and buried in a landfill of human garbage? It all depends on whether you understand the complexity of these issues.”
Most people were outraged, but a few were sympathetic too. Count me in the middle. There’s no excusing the way this farmer abandoned his animals, but I understand his dilemma. I also raise chickens, and I have the same problem, though on a smaller scale. Karla, the only chicken butcher/processor around, has decided she will no longer take old hens. Her crew revolted after I brought her a couple dozen three-year old hens around the same time some other farmer, perhaps the chicken dumper himself, had also brought in a bunch of tough old birds, and Karla decided she’d had enough. Old chickens are much harder for her crew to process, she told me, and what’s the point anyway? Those old birds aren’t great food anyway. There’s no arguing with Karla.
And so, this guy decided to dump his birds. A hundred chickens is a lot to butcher or kill and dispose of without some kind of facility. Which leaves us with a dilemma. What should we do with these old hens who eat costly feed and don’t lay so well anymore and aren’t worth much for meat? It’s a problem that most egg-eaters have probably never thought about, and I haven’t found a good solution. If you keep them around until they die a natural death, you’ll never come close to breaking even on your egg-laying operation. (We actually eat those chewy old chickens —put them in the stewpot all day and eventually most parts are edible. The dogs are happy to get the rest.)
Despite my best efforts, I have yet to turn a profit on my small poultry business. Still, I’m not ready to give it up just yet. This year I’m raising chickens and guinea fowl, and in previous years I’ve also kept heritage turkeys, geese and ducks. My birds roam on three acres of pasture and orchard, and they fertilize our soil and the hens produce delicious eggs. The eggs my guinea hens lay are some of the richest, most delicious foods you’ll ever find in nature. My meat chickens are far more flavorful than any chicken you’ll buy in a store, but they’re also smaller than factory-raised birds and their breasts aren’t ridiculously large like the ones sold in grocery stores. People expecting the enormous, cheap, flavorless chicken breasts served at conferences and chain restaurants may find my chickens startlingly dark and savory. Some balk at the price too. Even without any markup, it costs me more to raise my chickens to butchering age than it does to buy several larger cheap chickens at our local supermarket.
Still, I refuse to give up my poultry business. I feel a responsibility to see that my meat is raised humanely, and I want to give my birds a good life. But it’s not easy to balance the ethics and economics on the farm. I’d like to keep my laying hens for several years, but I don’t have the capacity to butcher more than one or two at a time on my farm, and without a facility to process old layers, I could face the same dilemma as the farmer who dumped those hundred hens last summer. It’s a more difficult problem than most foodies understand. Most urbanites just want to assuage their guilt by paying a little more for an organic label. No one wants to think about the hard realities of farming.
Image by Christie Aschwanden
We always ate our old stewpots too: chicken and dumplings. But we were also a small outfit and never had more than we could butcher, or eat, or freeze-and-eat. So: sympathy, empathy, but no solution.
My parents have always found someone happy to adopt them – but they never have more than 10 or so chickens.
There’s been a rise in organic, humane, chicken based dog foods. Perhaps some kind of cooperative could be formed to supply the old layers to pet food producers. Finding an industry who can derive value from the old chickens – upcycle them, if you will – is key to a long term solution.
Iowa is the leading producer of eggs in the country and as such we have the most spent hens to deal with. There are several processors of spent hens who make poultry meal out of the millions of spent hens each year. This poultry meal is a prime ingredient in pet food. However, without access to these ultra large rendering plants, it becomes difficult for small, niche producers who are fulfilling a great need for local and organic ag products to find an outlet for these spent hens. Christie raises an interesting dilemma with no good solutions.
Not having processors for small producers is a serious problem. There used to be butchers and processors in every small to medium town. Now the business is so consolidated and concentrated that unless you are dealing with millions of birds, you are out of luck. There is no short term solution. It will take years to rebuild the infrastructure needed to support small farms again. That said, I’ve found that a good way to roast older birds is to roast them very slowly, 5 hours, at just 190F in a covered pot. The result is amazing: http://wp.me/p44c6k-K0