“A Chicken in Every Pot”

In November, I slaughtered all the laying hens I hadn’t managed to find new homes for. So far, I think I’ve sold one, maybe two, out of around a hundred. This tells me that it’s not worth paying to have stewing hens processed for sale.

At the same time, I’m seeing my new, one-year-old hens laying more than twice as many eggs as the old girls did last summer, so I appreciate the need to keep hens no longer than two years. I’m keeping two flocks, staggered, so that I’ll be retiring one flock and buying a new one every fall. But what do I do with the old ones? I can’t afford to pay for processing if they won’t sell, and I don’t want to just kill them and compost them. It was when I realized I was probably going to end up donating most of my remaining stewing hens (minus a few for ourselves, of course) to the food pantry that I came up with an idea.

All season at the farmers markets this year, I’ll have a can out on my table to accept donations. I’ll use this money to process the hens at the end of the season (the ones I don’t manage to sell as live birds), and then donate them to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. I’ll also give them any money collected in excess of the cost of processing and transport, if we raise that much. Maybe I could post monthly updates here on how much money we raise.