Why Chicken?

I hope to answer this question first and foremost through your tastebuds. Instead of asking why chicken, I hope to lead you to the question of why does this chicken taste so good? And why have I not been eating chicken like this for so long?

Good clean meat comes from animals that are allowed to be themselves. Chickens can be chickens. They can scratch for grit, pick for bugs and crunch on fresh grass. They are able to absorb sunlight, develop proper microbiomes, have access to fresh green foliage and clean water. 

I see opportunity in chicken. Opportunity to change the status quo.  More than any other species of livestock (and chicken is the most consumed livestock in the United States), chickens live a life in industrial production that is furthest from their natural state. The reality in which a conventional industrial chicken is produced (virtually all your chicken at the grocery store, even organic) is morally repugnant.  Up to 8 chickens share an 18"x22" cage with an average of one dead chicken per cage that are not removed because their carcass is nutritionally valuable to the production model (cannibalism), and ethical management would require more labor (which is why industrial meat production is a risk vector for artificially selected pathogens and is the leading cause of antibiotic resistant bacteria). This results in food that is far less than what it could be, and sadly, less than what it used to be. 

My model seeks to flip "progress" on its head with a husbandry that would be more familiar to your great-grandparents than a modern chicken producer. I move the chickens every day to fresh pasture by hand.  Chickens import fertility to my ranch, converting their feed grains (and wild fish meal) into nitrogen rich manure which feeds the soil, importing C02 from the atmosphere, feeding microbiology, making it more resilient to drought and preserving the productive use of the land for generations to come. The chickens spend their lives outside, at the risk of predators and the neurosis of the weather; more labor, less economies of scale, higher feed costs (all USDA organic no-corn and no-soy diet), and much lower production limits, because my pasture must be able to absorb all of the manure that the chickens provide. But this gives you poultry that lived its life as a chicken. This husbandry model leads to meat higher in micronutrients, free from contaminants and allergens, soil that captures carbon, and soil fertility that our grandchildren can enjoy.