Meat Math

I took a local coop tour a few months ago and one of the participants was asking questions about broilers or dinner chickens. I’ve been thinking about the subject ever since. I’d like to look more carefully at the numbers.
Now, let’s pretend I have a garage to raise a pile of little dinners in. I don’t have a garage, but let’s pretend for now because I really don’t think I can stomach the idea of raising dinner chickens in the upstairs bathroom. I don't know, maybe I can, if the numbers work……

I can purchase 25 newborn chickens from McMurray Hatchery for approximately $35 plus $15 in shipping. These will be Cornish Rock crosses and will grow into dinner quite quickly. They arrive here and I set them up with water, a heat lamp and some food. I feed them organic food for about 10 weeks. At this point they will weigh about 2-3 pounds each and can be “processed”. So, there’s the cost of set-up, which is minimal. Heat lamps and chick feeders will cost you less than $10 and can be used again and again. The more important numbers are these:
$54 for chicks
$50 for 100 pounds of organic feed (half that if organic is not important to you)

That’s about $4 per chicken or $2.00 per pound of organic chicken. Great price right? Sure but you’ll pay the same price at Trader Joes plus a little gas money. Grown at home you’ll know they’ve eaten and lived well but then you have to “process and dress” or kill, pluck, and gut your little chickens.

How to kill them? Well, you could ring their neck, stab them in the head, use a chicken guillotine or hang them upside down from a tree and bleed them. Then you have to drop them into hot water and pluck the feathers. THEN you have to cut them open and remove all the innards. Last, but not least, you must wait for rigormortis to release before placing them into the chest freezer for dinner another night. After spending your day processing 25 chickens, my guess is that you eat vegetarian for dinner. After all the reading I’ve done on the subject this week, I may be eating vegetarian for a while.

So, the numbers prove that it may well be slightly cheaper and better for your body to raise your own roasting chicken. I don’t know how good it is for your psyche. At least you’ll be truly in touch with what you’re eating. I’d love to find a local processing plant that would do the dirty work for me so that I can continue to live in denial while enjoying the best nutrition. Sadly, I’ve spoken to the guys at Santa Rosa Meat and Martindales and they said, “No, you have to do it yourself.” You MIGHT find someone to do it for $6 bucks a chicken but you may as well buy a good organic free range chicken for that price.”. I think they’re right.

Fine then. What about beef?
We live on a small downtown lot so raising cattle isn’t really an option. If we had a small rural lot we could raise Miniature
cattle but they’re way too cute to be dinner. I found this great farm through my friend Laura. It’s called Freestone Ranch. They grow grass fed cattle that is tender, lean, and tasty and really well priced. The numbers really do pencil out here too. After you pay the rancher, the harvester (rifleman) and the butcher, the meat costs about $5.50 a pound. This includes all the cuts from soup bones, to rib roast, and from T-bones, to burgers. Plus, these folks are acting as stewards of the land. They are concerned with the native grass and take grazing very seriously. They are respectful of the cow as an animal and don't feed him foods which would be unnatural, like corn, just to fatten him up. They harvest quickly and on site so the cow isn't confused and stressed when he meets his end. This means a better life and death for the cow and more tender meat for dinner as it's not full of adrenaline from a stressed out cow. I am very interested in this, so much that I began doing the research on chest freezers. I certainly can’t fit 150 pounds of beef in my regular freezer!

Just a bit more math: An energy star rated freezer from Sears will cost you at the least $370 for a 13 cubic foot size and will store 455 pounds of frozen food. If it’s full it’ll cost you around $44 per year to run. Of course, you’ll need to actually keep it full or the energy costs go up. You could process your 25 chickens, buy a quarter of beef, keep a good stash of frozen garden veggies and apple pies and even homemade popsicles and maybe fill it. Then you have to remember to shop from it when you’re in search of dinner. I think this may be a great idea. I’m not sure we have the commitment needed though. Sounds like we should discuss it over dinner. Not chicken tonight.

On a slightly side note: You can buy a smaller freezer but it won’t be Energy Star rated. While it may cost you about $5 more per year in electricity, a smaller freezer will cost you less to purchase. I guess the savings is in the environmental guilt and not just your pocket book.