Feeling grateful yet? Teenage poultry farmer dishes straight talk
Posted: 11/10/2012 12:01:00 AM MST
November 11, 2012 7:12 PM GMTUpdated: 11/11/2012 12:12:20 PM MST
By Shelby GrebencNovember 11, 2012 7:12 PM GMTUpdated: 11/11/2012 12:12:20 PM MST
Special to The Denver Postdenverpost.com
Shelby Grebenc has been raising chickens for both eggs and meat at her family's Adams County farm. In this 2011 photo, she holds Chipmunk, one of her Americana hens. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
I also have chickens and I sell eggs at a local dairy, farmers market, and from roadside signs telling people how to get to my house. I also sell live chickens and broilers.
People around me use words like "organic," "farm fresh," "local-food movement," "free range" and "sustainability," and I thought farming might be a good idea since we sort of do this for our family anyway. My dad raises our own cows because he does not want my brother or me exposed to growth hormones and antibiotics that are used to raise commercial meat. Dad
Shelby Grebenc, 13, collects eggs at her family's farn in unincorporated Adams County. She'll get as many as nine dozen in a winter afternoon from her 100-plus hens. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
I charge $4.25 for a dozen of my eggs and $20 per broiler chicken based on my costs. Baby chickens cost me around $2 each. I lose around 10 percent of them because they just die for no reason when they are little.
An egg-layer chicken takes around 28 to 32 weeks to lay its first egg. A broiler chicken takes six to 20 weeks before it is ready to eat. All during this time, I have to feed, water and keep them warm. The layers are not laying eggs to sell yet. Heat lamps use electricity, and an electric bill can be around $200 per month.
A pound of chicken feed costs me 23 cents a pound if I order it in 6-ton batches. Each chicken eats around 2 pounds of food each week and produces around seven to 12 eggs per week. Egg cartons cost me a nickel each. I have to clean the chicken coop, gather, wash and package eggs, and then I have to have sawdust for bedding and nesting boxes. I pay $5 for each broiler chicken to be slaughtered, USDA inspected, packaged and flash frozen.
I also have to pay my dad for diesel to drive the chickens to the only USDA-inspected chicken processor in this state, which is in Nunn, close to 100 miles from my house, and a day or two later we have to drive back and pick them up.
I had to buy fencing for a pen because the foxes and the coyotes eat a lot of my birds because they are free-range and run around in the pasture. You can see there is not a lot of profit for me, but I don't do too bad for being 13 years old.
Thing No. 1 that I have learned about farming: People talk a lot, but it does not mean much. I have people who want lots of eggs tell me to deliver a certain amount every week. I have to save up the eggs to do this, and then they change their minds and don't want them.
Thing No. 2: People all say words like "farm fresh," "sustainability," but they don't want to actually pay for what it actually costs me to make it. Almost everyone tries to talk me into lowering my price or asks me to give my eggs away for free.
Thing No. 3: Perception is everything. I have chickens that lay both white and brown eggs. The chickens are raised side by side. They all get the same feed, and they all run around in the same pasture together. People perceive the brown eggs are better, so I have trouble selling white eggs.
When we are at the farmers markets, if Dad is sitting with me, I don't sell very many eggs or vegetables. If Dad is not sitting with me, I sell like crazy. Just how do the people shopping at the farmers market think that I got the great big F-350 truck that I am selling the eggs and vegetables out of down to the farmers market?
Thing No. 4: Farming takes a lot of time. I have to get up early so that I can feed and water everyone and be on the school bus by 7:50 a.m. When I get home I have to collect eggs, feed and water everyone again, and then package eggs. Then I get to do my homework.
Thing No. 5: Marketing. I collect my eggs in a 5-gallon bucket. This is practical, because it holds them all in one trip. If I have customers coming over when I am gathering eggs, I put my hair in pigtails, and I use a small straw basket and make lots of trips. People like to buy eggs from little kids skipping through the pasture with a basket of eggs.
Last thing: Farming is very hard work. I don't make a lot of money doing it, and people do not support what you are doing. I live out in the country. As new folks move in, they complain about the name of your farm, smells, mooing cows, bleating sheep and crowing roosters, even though these things were there before they built a million-dollar house and moved in. I do not plan on farming in the future.
If you want sustainable, wholesome, pasture-raised organic, hormone- and antibiotic-free food, you have to support it. You can not get these things by talking about it and not paying for it.
The next time you shop at a farmers market, think about what it cost me to grow it. Don't ask me to take less and then tell me you can get it cheaper at a big-box store. I know you can — but it will not be as fresh or as good as what I have, and you won't make me cry.
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There's no way that I could have said it as well as she did. She is so dead-on and funny to boot. We've been rolling our eyes at this kind of stuff for years, at how ill-informed and gullible people are, at all of the fancy names people give things - organic, farm-fresh, local-grown, free-range, sustainability, wholesome, pasture-raised, grass-fed, hormone-free, antibiotic-free - because that's how things were farmed for centuries. It was only when customers start making demands about their food that farmers started to change how they did things. Due to ill-informed consumers bitching to governments, officials started making new laws that never favored the farmer, but instead made life more difficult and more expensive while pretending to satisfy the consumer.
My 16-year-old son raised chickens to sell for the past 2 years and will likely do it only for us next year. Last year, he was given a full extensive list of customer names, addresses and phone numbers from a well-connected neighbor who sold birds of all sorts for years but she was done with it. When my son called the numbers, most of the people turned him down even though they knew where he'd gotten their names (one lady called to verify). Our final impression was that they bought from her because they considered her a friend and were not about to buy from anyone else even though their only other option was the local big box stores.
The first time that we raised meat birds ourselves (before our kids were born), they pretty much all turned out fine. We knew NOTHING about raising chicken for meat or for eggs but after having the first year turn out so well, we thought we'd learned it all. Ha Ha!! Not quite! The next year, we raised 50 for meat and 46 died. 4 made it to the butcher shop and into our freezer. Later I went down to the freezer to dig something out from under the 4 nice, huge birds and set them out on the old canning shelves beside the freezer. We found them right where I had left them - the next day. Thanks to my stupidity, we did not get a single bird that year. We've done it off and on over the last 24 years and still run into difficulties. I can only imagine a 13-year-old kid having to go through this - and then being harassed when she tries to sell them.
If we let our birds run free range outside, we would have to build a chicken coop first then do all of the fencing as well. Even if the foxes and coyotes couldn't get to our chickens, they'd hang around looking for any little morsel - and that could easily be our new kittens as they follow their mamas outside for the first time and are not quick enough to get away. We just leave our meat chickens inside the barn for their safety but maybe someday we'll be able to afford to do the whole outside thing properly...but it ain't cheap.
Coyote Bait?!
Referring to thing #1. The guy who used to pick our eggs up begged us to keep our promise to him whenever we promised him a certain number of eggs each week. When we asked why he was so adamant, he told us that every week, a bunch of farmers from a certain religious group would promise him X number of dozens of eggs. When he would go to pick them up, there would never be as many as promised. They would nonchalantly mention that customers would come to the door and want some so they would just sell them. The guy who picked them up had to drive 2 hours to the city to deliver them and going with half of a load wasn't really worth it but the people in the city were waiting for their eggs and if you want to keep your customers happy, you have to deliver anyway, regardless of your loss.
Referring to thing #2. She said it all and all so true.
Referring to thing #3. The whole brown vs. white thing cracks me up. (No pun intended.) When I was in school, brown eggs were considered "farmer eggs" meaning something that only farmers ate because they couldn't afford white eggs. White eggs were better for you, better quality, just better all around. Then suddenly, brown eggs made their appearance and were not very successful so the new info. that was put out about them was about how brown eggs are actually much higher in everything good and much lower in everything bad. (It was later, just a few years ago, admitted to the press that this was misinformation purposely put to the public in order to promote a flailing brown egg industry). And of course, all of us sheeple (yes, my family included) rushed to the store to buy. So much so, that when hubby and I bought our first laying hens we also wanted only brown eggs, too and so did our customers. Until Easter!! Suddenly, people thought that all of our brown-laying hens could lay white eggs for 1 or 2 weeks leading up to Easter and I guess they thought that our hens would then revert back. They were very upset that they couldn't get white eggs for 1 week a year!
Referring to thing #4. Amen!! Ain't that the truth!!!
Referring to thing #5. Oh my goodness!! So funny!! Exactly why we don't tell people that our chickens are kept in the barn and not running around outside. Perception is usually everything and reality doesn't matter.
Referring to the last thing. Years ago, some city people here built their houses on acreages then complained about all of the things that she mentioned, especially the smell. They tried to officially shut the farmers (and I mean ALL farmers, near and far) down by taking them to court. The courts unbelievably ruled in the farmers' favor and the verdict was final... shut up or move out. Farms were there first and you chose to move in...too bad. Isn't that why the people moved there in the first place - for the mooing cows, bleating lambs, cock-a-doodle-dooing roosters, clucking hens, the beautiful scenic panarama?
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Just in case you think that I'm being too harsh...I spent 25 years growing up in the city and 24.5 years on the farm so far so I kind of see both sides fairly evenly. But trying to cajole, intimidate, threaten or whatever farmers, market gardeners, kids growing and selling farm produce into lowering their prices or giving their products away for free would be akin to me going to my lawyer, dentist, orthodontist, eye doctor, Walmart, grocery store, taxi driver, city bus, etc., etc., etc., and asking them to give their services/products to me for very cheap or better still, free. That would be great, absolutely fabulous!!! After putting braces on 4 kids so far and only 2 more to go at a cost that started out at $4,000 per child but rose to $6,000 per child and will likely be $7,000 and $8,000 for the next 2 kids, I would love it if my orthodontist would give her services for oh...maybe like $500 or even free!!!Think it might happen?
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