Portfolio Piece: Entrepreneur Chickens

SPRING2016

Virginia Entrepreneur Big Ideas for Small Businesses

PROCESSING YOUR OWN CHICKENS From Farm to Frying Pan

Everything Eggs Buying, Selling, Cooking

RAISING BACKYARD CHICKENS Things to consider before buying your first flock

Chicken Farming Across Virginia

Table of Contents Raising Backyard Chickens

Recipes

Things to consider before buying your own flock: cost, space, laws, time, effort and resources.

Egg salad, quiche, deviled eggs...egg recipes from chicken ranchers across Virginia.

Processing Your Own Chickens

4-H Chickens

You can send your chickens to be processed, or you can oversee the process yourself. Here’s what’s involved, along with some tips on making a difficult and often emotional process for many, a little easier.

Tomorrows chicken farmers—what they’re learning and doing today.

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Everything Eggs

Everything you might have wondered about eggs (well, practically everything), including where to buy them, find them and how to test them for freshness.

About the Cover Photo

Sexing Your Chickens

If you live in a zone that forbids Roosters it’s important to make sure you’re buying hens.

That’s just one reason to know what gender your chicks are.

What’s the Best Breed for Me? Can’t decide what breed to raise? Once you know the answers to these 10 questions the answer may be clearer.

Virginia Chicken Farmers There are thousands of chicken farmers in Virginia each with a unique story to share. Here are just a half-dozen across the state who are passionate about their flocks.

Our Father’s Farm—Gretna Pat Cheeks—Harrisonburg Four Corners Farm—Southern VA

(Above) Blue, an Americana rooster owned by Pat Cheeks of Harrisonburg, watches as _____ , a barred Plymouth hen, forages for bugs. Cheeks is a Board-Certified Psychiatric Mental Health Clinical Nurse Specialist (PMHCNS-BC) with more than 31 years experience as a nurse, counselor, therapist, wife, mother and life navigator.

She is a “life navigator” serving clients undergoing life’s transitions in Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and surrounding areas. Cheeks has a flock of eight hens and one rooster.

Her story is on page ___ .

VABiz Magazine is a free, online magazine covering the people, places and businesses across rural Virginia. Advertising and hardcopy paper issues are available. Contact us at info@VABIZmagazine.com or visit our website for more information.

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Our Father’s Farm

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The family that prays together, processes chickens together too. Kim and Jack Fuhrmann have been raising, processing and selling chickens for more than five years now. Like many farmers and meat producers they face opposition from people opposed to eating meat, but they far more support from customers who appreciate healthy, free range chicken raised and processed in a respectful, humane way. T

From Farm to Fork Jack and Kim Fuhrmann haven’t always raised chickens. After they were married in 1995 they were missionaries in the heart of Africa for seven years. God led them to become family farmers in 2003. After finding the perfect farm, a former tobacco farm originally built in the late 1800′s, they began raising their family first—nine children and a Grandmere (which means Grandmother in French). Then they turned to the fields and began raising chickens, cattle, horses, goats, cats and a large garden.

From the first day until now, they have asked the Lord to bless and guide them in every aspect of life so that God would be glorified, depending solely on the Bible and their faith.

The couple says their desire is to serve the community with healthy, life-giving foods raised and grown the way they were created to be; and that their home is a ministry center where people can come for short or long periods of time in order that they can both learn from each other.

Jack Fuhrmann reads a BIble passage and prays for the safety of the family and volunteers during the day’s processing. His daughter NAME, who is cooking eggs for the family and several volunteers, listens in the background. (RIGHT) Plates and just picked broccoli from the family farm.

Photos by Becky Blanton

R O F T N O O I N T T U F B A I R R D IST D (RIGHT) NAME Ben Fuhrmann carries a hen he just captured in the woods back to the pickup truck. The BREED chickens are free range, roaming in an open, wooded lot and field, feasting on cicadas, grass and a variety of insects throughout the day.

Larger hens (eight weeks and up) will wander farther from the coop and often into the woods to seek shade and cooler temperatures. Water, shade and feed is provided under a small chicken “coop,” although this particular breed of chicken does not roost. Instead they gather and huddle on the ground.

One of the family’s two dogs is put into the fenced area to guard the hens and protect them from predators at night. Although the area is fenced, the chickens squeeze under it throughout the day, returning at night to be with the flock.

The breed, a hybrid created specifically for its meat, grows quickly—going from chick to ready to process in eight weeks.

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R O F T N O O I N T T U F B A I R R D IST D Hope Fuhrmann places a chicken in the back of the family’s pickup truck for the ride back to the processing area.

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Davi Fuhrmann collects chickens for the ride back to the processing tables.

(TOP) NAME Fuhrmann looks over the chickens he and his siblings have just collected for processing.

(CENTER) NAME FUHRMANN slits a chicken’s throat and windpipe, allowing the blood to drain out into a trough and then a bucket to be disposed of later. This process is more humane than most, killing the chickens within seconds. The cones keep the chicken held in a soft, secure manner, preventing bruising to the meat, and keeping the chickens calm until they are processed. (RIGHT) Within seconds of being drained, NAME Fuhrmann takes the now dead hens to a rack to be scaled, defeathered, and processed for sale.

(LEFT) NAME Fuhrmann dips two dead chickens into a bucket of 140 degree water to scald the birds so their feathers can be easily removed with a mechanical chicken plucker.

(RIGHT) Closeup of chickens in the galvanized can as they are processed.

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NAME, a volunteer helping the family, holds a chicken in the feather plucker. The gray rubber “fingers” in the plucker grab the feathers without bruising the meat of the bird. The birds are dead at this point. (ABOVE RIGHT) Two hens being rinsed off as they’re placed in the plucker.

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(RIGHT) Once they’ve been scalded, plucked and had their heads and lower legs, as well as their oil glands in the tail section cut off, the hens are gutted, rinsed, cleaned and prepared for the last phases of the process.

After being cleaned they’re placed in coolers of heavily iced water to cool the bodies down and preserve the taste and tenderness of the hens.

They’re then drained, bagged and refrigerated, ready for sale.

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NAME Fuhrmann stands at one of the processing tables overlooking the family’s lake.

Hope Fuhrmann rests during a lull in the day’s processing.

(LEFT) The lower portion of the hen’s legs are cut off and saved. Customers prize the lower legs for their dogs because of the high protein content. They buy the legs by the pound for their animals.

(LEFT) One of the volunteers cuts off the oil gland at the top of the hen’s tail.

(LEFT) Jack Fuhrmann removes organs from a hen. The green tube in the background is a hose with continuously running water that is used to clean and rinse the bird and the stainless steel preparation area.

(LEFT) The family and volunteers are careful not to break the bile sac (in circle) as they remove the chicken’s organs.

They remove all the organs by hand to make sure the intestines and other organs don’t rupture and potentially spoil the meat.

As each chicken is gutted and cleaned it is placed into a cooler of ice water to keep temperatures at a safe level, and to prevent rigor mortis from setting in so the chicken stays tender.

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(ABOVE LEFT) VOLUNTEER NAME cleans the PVC pipes which will hold the hens for bagging.

(TOP) Buffy ______, a volunteer points to which chickens she will be bagging.

(LEFT TO RIGHT IN BACKGROUND), NAME, a repeat customer buying chicken and chicken legs for her dogs, her husband NAME and far right, Jack Fuhrman.

(LEFT) NAME Fuhrmann places labels on freshly shrink wrapped chickens before placing the birds into a cooler of ice.

(LEFT) NAME Fuhrmann puts a ring on a bagged chicken. The ring secures the bag for shrink wrapping.

(BOTTOM) Closeup view of the pliers and ring used to seal the bags.

(TOP) Freshly shrink wrapped and labeled hens on ice, ready to be moved to a freezer.

(LEFT) The Fuhrmann’s also sell separately packaged legs, breasts and thighs.

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From Farm

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Everything Eggs From the time they’re laid, to the moment they reach grocery store shelves as quickly as 36 hours later, commercial eggs may never be touched by human hands until they’re cooked by a consumer.

It’s quite a different story for eggs from home grown hens. They are often on a breakfast plate within minutes, or hours, of being laid.

The egg industry is totally automated, uses hundreds of thousands of hens bred specially for laying eggs. These “layers,” as they’re called, are fed special formulated diets, crowded into small, environmentally controlled barns or structures, and rarely, if ever, range freely in a field, eat bugs or anything seen in a “natural” home grown environment.