Another day, another chicken

Rain, cool, needed. Chickens, hmmmm.

We have too many chickens. How does that work? Surely there is a well thought out and designed system. Huge investment went into the field, houses and processing unit. Chicken is the in meat; four legs bad, two legs good (to completely misquote Orwell); red meat is 'bad' for you, white meat is 'good' for you; free range chicken is all over the press from J. Oliver to H. Fearnly -Whittingwhatever. And we have too many.

Well, we did. Since Max took over the chickens from Neil and we have recovered from the Feb break-in, the survival rate has shot up and so from 150ish we now have 200ish per week (as we should from a fortnightly 425 day olds delivery). However, Richard is out of here from friday (off to Devon with Melanie to work for a farm selling its meat online), Barry is on holiday until Monday and we just aren't getting the customer numbers in the shop (we still sell out of Sirloin and Fillet pretty quickly though).

Plaw Hatch is not really selling any meat at the moment, certainly none of Tablehursts, due to the lack of a shop manager (Alex has gone and a replacement has yet to be found).

So we had too many chickens. Fortunately, a call to a London butcher saw us lose 30 a week at the right price and, whilst rehanging their sign with the JCB, 12 were sold to The Chequers. Still, with the right marketing and a little more focus we should ideally be able to sell everything through the shop. Work in progress. Also of note, The Foresters now sells only organic food, including Tablehurst sausages. Trebles all round.