North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>]

>Turkey Ridge Organic Orchard in SW Wisc does successive rotations of hogs then chickens thru about 27 acres of their apples.  They buy big flocks of spent hens for pennies a bird & run them for one season & then have a big butchering party.  The orchard floor essentially looks like someone ran a tiller / cultivator thru it.

mIEKAL, That sounds like some terrific eating, the hens would be about 2 - 3 years old and would make soup to die for.  By the time they'd spent a season in the orchard they'd be much tastier than butchered straight out of their battery cages, and probably much more nutritious.  It's nice to think they'd get to be real hens for awhile too.  We used to pick up a few spent hens from the UT ag school, and the poor things didn't know how to walk properly, or how to scratch.  At dusk they would just sit down where ever they were, and we'd go out in the twighlight and pick up all the ghostly white things and put them in the shed with the real hens, till they got the hang of it.  Someone told me about how his pond wouldn't hold water and he bought old sows, said all the cost at that point is maintainence feed. Donna