OK, son Frankie–always interested in all thinks related to economics; is excited to see that his allowance source (the egg “division” here at Morning Song ) has demonstrated an equilibrium between supply and demand. We’ve taken on 5 new orders; and until our juvenile chickens are laying consistently in a few more months; he says we can’t fill any more.
Thanks so much to all of you who are allowing us to raise chickens as they should be raised. A side note; I was inspected yesterday for our CCOF Organic Certification, and I asked Shannon Murphy, our inspector, about what it would take to have our chickens certified organic. I was pretty sure what her answer would be, but I wanted to hear it from her. She couldn’t quote the pricetag; but since Morning Song Farm offers sactuary to an occassional homeless chicken we can never become certified organic. She said we’d have to get rid of all our chickens, start over with just hatched, day old chicks and then document from Day One that there never again was any chicken from the “outside.” That’s not consistent with our mission here, so we’ll just carry on uncertified.
As I mentioned in my last blog, Couscou the llama who guards our chickens, discovered how tasty Modesto Milling’s Organic Soy-Free chicken feed is; (unlike conventional chicken feed; Modesto Mill’s smells delicious) and ate quite the stomach full, easily doubling our chicken feed costs this month before we figured it out. For the last couple days I was baffled why he wouldn’t accept any of the weed treats I offered him. Not interested!(?) Not after 50 pounds of chicken feed for breakfast, Farmer Donna! Words were exchanged between Frankie and the crew here, as everyone was saying they fed the chickens, but darn it if there never was any feed in that barn. Bad llama! Frankie, who is assigned the duty of lugging 50 pound sacks of Modesto feed; came up with an inspired solution: the feed tray now goes INSIDE the old baby chick enclosure with the lid wide open. Chickens can hop inside, but Couscous is way too big.
The excitement here at MSF never ceases!