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FARM-RAISED, FREE-RANGE MEAT
Consumers not only want to know more about the source of their fruits, vegetables, and milk, they are also willing to pay a premium to be more knowledgeable about how and where their meat is raised. With growth hormones and chemical feed additives becoming more and more controversial, many consumers feel it’s time to be more proactive about seeking out meat raised by local farmers. Here’s where you can come in.
Raising cattle, chickens, and pigs on a small scale to sell locally might not be a big moneymaking venture, but it can pay for itself and cover the cost of your own meat in the process. If you can get some restaurant customers, you can, in fact, make some money at it.
The USDA offers no regulatory definition of the term “free range” beyond the fact that in order for chicken to be labeled as “free-range” raised, the birds needed to have access to the outdoors while raised for meat. Free-range in general refers to animals being able to live normal lives for their species. Chickens are allowed to roam around and eat bugs and peck in the dirt. Pigs can wallow in mud holes and root up stumps. Cattle are not confined to a feedlot to wait until they weigh enough to make them profitable and, in the case of veal, young calves are not confined to small pens. They have room to roam and graze according to the norms of their species and interact with each other as a herd or flock.
This is not typically how our meat is grown on a commercial scale. Chickens live in quarters so confined they almost can’t move. Their beaks are clipped so they don’t peck at each other. Turkeys are confined and fed so much to make them the huge birds that people have come to expect for their Thanksgiving meal, that the turkey’s legs eventually can’t support its own weight; the bird can’t move at all for the last portion of its short life.
These are the conditions that “free-range” looks to avoid. And if you are careful to market your meat with this information, the growing number of people who desire this kind of husbandry will seek out your homegrown, free-range meat.
THINGS TO CONSIDER
Whether you call it free range or not, no matter how you raise your animals, if you plan to sell their meat, you need to be comfortable with raising animals for meat—you can’t consider them as pets. You don’t have to slaughter them yourself; in fact, food regulations do not allow you to do that without setting up an expensive processing area. However, you need to emotionally be able to load them on the truck to go to the slaughterhouse. Some people can do this without any hesitation, others can’t. If you are one of the former, you can be a great source of meat for people who want to know that the animals that are giving their lives to become food at least had good lives of their own while they were on the planet.
HOW DO YOU WANT TO SPEND YOUR DAY?
You will spend your day tending to animals. If you are not feeding, you will be cleaning their pens. If you are not cleaning their pens, you will be doctoring the animals when they develop problems, which they do no matter how carefully you take care of them. If you aren’t doctoring them yourself, you will be waiting for the veterinarian to come. You also need to make sure there is adequate and appropriate food and bedding. And as anyone who has kept farm animals will tell you, when you think there is nothing else to do, there is always fence mending and construction!
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
You will need to already have an appropriate property to raise the animals you choose to raise. This will differ greatly, as you might imagine, depending on what type of animals you decide to market. Chickens and rabbits, which require minimal space to be happy, are on one side of the spectrum while cattle, which require a lot of space, are on the other.
If you don’t already own property, another option is to try to lease some land. Keep in mind, however, that you will be installing fencing and constructing housing that will benefit the landowner, not you. Perhaps you can arrange the lease to reduce the lease payments by a percentage of the housing and fencing if you leave it behind when the lease ends.
Fencing needs will range from not much to heavy duty—although for most small livestock such as chickens, ducks, geese, and rabbits, the fencing is primarily to keep predators out, not to keep the animals in.
MARKETING ANGLE
Although you will spend most of your time tending to the animals themselves and their peripheral needs, such as housing and fencing, you will also need to spend time on marketing or hire someone else to do it. Your main angle is, of course, the free-range aspect of your operation. There are many people who want to feel better about eating meat by at least knowing that the animals enjoyed life and were slaughtered in the quickest and most humane way possible.
The other marketing angle is the people who buy their meat from you as opposed to the grocery store, know where the meat is raised and whether or not you use growth hormones (probably not, because using such drugs would be counter to your free-range approach) and other things such as medicated feeds.
To market your meat products, consider creating meat packages. Offer different packages for all sizes of families. You can sell an entire dressed hog in varying cuts, or a side of beef and its different cuts, or mix and match with pork, beef, chicken, perhaps a turkey, and a couple of more exotic choices, such as rabbit stew meat and buffalo burger.
In a business like this, your marketing materials should reflect the wholesome, natural approach you are taking with your products.
NICE TOUCH
As with any “raw” food business of this kind, it is always a nice touch to include some recipes with your meat packages. At the very least, be sure customers know how to cook any of the more unusual cuts, such as rabbit or buffalo.
EXPANSION POSSIBILITIES
Starting simple in a labor-intensive business such as one that involves raising live animals is always a wise approach. Perhaps you get your homegrown, free-range meat business started with chickens and a few hogs. Expansion for you could simply mean that once you are experienced with one type of animal, you add another.
If your setup is right, you could add a small roadside stand to your operation. You will, however, need to have some refrigeration and electricity access to showcase at least some portion of your offerings.
Another expansion possibility in this market is to add upper-scale restaurants and/or specialty markets to your customer base. This kind of expansion means you would be selling your meat at wholesale prices. It would also mean an increase in the amount of meat you sell, but that increase would mean increasing your overhead in the number of animals you raise.
WORDS TO KNOW
Pastured poultry: Chickens and turkeys raised on pasture rather than in confinement.
Stocking density:The number of animals in a certain amount of area. It is not necessarily equivalent to free range.
RESOURCES
apppa.org: American Pastured Poultry Producers Association