Chicken production continues evolving at Bellair

Nat holds one of our Cornish Rock crosses from the 2023 production season. We will continue chicken production for 2024 with a new breed and a new partner for processing.

Over a year has elapsed since we jumped back into broiler (meat) chicken production! Regular readers may remember last year's Annual Update where we mentioned a new partnership between us and a couple other partner producers (Sylvanaqua and Growmore Farms aka the Blackbird Co-op). Well, we are here with another update about chicken! We learned a lot from participating in this pilot program. Read on for details:

What worked:

We loved that partnering with other farmers means manure on the ground and chicken in our freezers without the hassle of processing them.

What didn't:

Financially it was hard to make things work with partner farms situated 2.5 hours away. We were less well-positioned than our partners to get grain at a super low price due to availability and delivery logistics, and we also value the quality and relationship we have with our current grain supplier, Sunrise Farms. Operating on a large property also means chores take longer just due to transportation time. These things combined into us not being able to cover production costs at the agreed-upon rate we were using.

What now:

Blackbird Co-op continues! What wasn't working for us is still working for them and we wish them the best of luck as they continue to move forward to produce affordable chicken at scale! As for us, we are taking the general model and concept and doing it on a smaller scale with a singular partner farm closer to home. 

We will be working with longtime partner Bear Bottom Farm to process our chicken for 2024. Bear Bottom is closer, about 45 minutes away, and that should help with costs and logistics. We will be raising a different breed of chicken, one that grows slightly slower but is more hearty and thrives on pasture. We plan on growing out a slightly larger bird than the ones that we had last for sale last year. We are targeting 4.5-5 lbs for a whole bird and a little larger for the ones we part out. 

The other thing that changes about our 2024 production is that we should as of April have an inspected kitchen facility to work out of. That means that we can capture the value of harder-to-move parts like backs and necks by making them into delicious bone broth, which we will sell frozen out of the Barn Store. Routing this frequently-overstocked item to a popular value-added product will increase our revenue and prevent food waste!

This photo represents about 4 lbs of chicken wings! These are from Spring Creek Meadows. You can see in the center and lower right the whole wings. At the back is the stack of “drums and flats” and at the bottom left is the stack of wing tips (plus one wing that was bruised so I routed it to stock instead of buffalo wings). The butchery can be tricky especially if you don’t have a sharp knife. You can always prepare whole wings to avoid it. If you do go to the trouble, save those wing tips to make a great and easy chicken stock!

What it means for you:

Sylvanaqua/Blackbird is sold out of chicken for the winter. We will be sourcing from another partner in the meantime, Spring Creek Meadows Farm. Come April, we will get back our first round of 2024 birds and for the first time they will have a Bellair Farm label on them! The new Bellair chicken will be more similar in heft and cutting style to the Spring Creek kind than to the Sylvanaqua kind. The biggest note is that wings won't be separated into drums and flats but instead will be left whole. You can absolutely prepare them whole or you can butcher them yourself into drums and flats and you'll have the added benefit of the wing tips, which can be made into stock!

Chicken wing tips plus veggie scraps = delicious and nutritious broth!