Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve gathered all the questions you didn’t even know you had...Let’s dive in!
Q: What do your chickens eat? A: Chickens being raised for meat need certain percentages of protein in their diet, as well as minerals and vitamins to keep them healthy. Because of this, our chickens are given a carefully selected feed ration from Reedy Fork Farm milled right here in North Carolina. This feed is certified organic, Non-GMO, and is sourced only from USA farms. The main source of protein in this feed is corn and whole roasted soybeans. In addition to a feed ration, our chickens naturally forage through our pastures when living outside and enjoy eating grass, bugs, flowers, and seeds. This forage accounts for about 20% of their diet and provides vitamins, minerals, Chlorophyll, pre and probiotics, and additional protein.
Q: Is your farm USDA inspected? A: Nope, and we actually prefer it this way! The USDA would require chickens like ours to be loaded onto open sided trucks and shipped to a facility where we must pay per bird for them to be processed. This creates additional costs for raising chickens and influences the final price for customers. We would have no control over what happens to our chickens and how they are processed once received by the USDA. Instead, we are inspected bi-annually by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture's Meat & Poultry Inspection Division (NCDA MPID). They stop by our farm to confirm we are following all required safety and health processes and allow us to process our own chickens without the USDA's involvement. This keeps our chickens under our direct supervision their entire lives, which means no stressful highway trips on a semi-truck for our chickens.
Q: Do you use bleach or chlorine to sanitize your processing equipment? A: No. Instead, we use mild soap and water for work surfaces, and a carefully measured vinegar solution to sanitize our chickens after processing. This is a sanitation option offered to us by the NCDA MPID and allows us to keep potentially harmful bacteria from contaminating our chicken, without having to use harsh chemicals that can have long term effects on our health when consumed.
Q: What kind of equipment do you use to process your chickens? Is it ethical and humane? A: We process our chickens right here on the farm, using methods and practices we've learned from the best farmers out there. Our goal is the quickest and least painful passing for our animals when being processed. These processes are very similar to the requirements for Halal and Kosher, however, we do not pay to be certified for either of these. We use commercial grade, stainless steel equipment designed to efficiently and quickly process a chicken, and we vacuum seal all of our products and keep frozen until sold.
Q: What is the difference between chickens raised like you do, and the chicken I usually buy at the grocery store? A: The biggest difference between the two is how the animal was raised. We believe that animals should live their best possible lives before contributing to the food chain. This means that chickens should live outdoors where they can scratch, forage, and lounge in the sunlight. We give our chickens space to stretch out and breath fresh air every day, and safety from predators in our custom made shelters. We process all our own animals on-farm and by hand, so that our animals never have to be shipped by open trailer hundreds of miles to a USDA processor. We believe this is unnecessary stress on an animal. These values aren't always the values of large poultry companies that distribute to grocery stores. It can be difficult to navigate the numerous label claims in grocery stores on animal welfare, that's why we invite you to see with your own eyes how we raise and process our animals, so that there is never mystery about how we do things here at Breakaway Pastures.
Q: What's the difference between your chicken, and the chickens from another local farm? A: While every farm is different, we here at Breakaway Pastures value raising a healthy animal that enjoyed it's life. We believe in making sure every animal has the highest quality diet, a life of safety and low stress, and is ethically and humanely processed here on the farm. We DON'T believe in overcrowding our chickens inside a barn or keeping them indoors their whole life. We DON'T believe chickens should be given vaccines, injections, steroids, antibiotics, or anything else that can be dangerous to humans and eventually consumed by a customer. We DON'T believe chickens should be crammed together in chicken cages and shipped at highway speeds hundreds of miles away to a processes that doesn't care for their wellbeing like we do.