Did you know that most chicken farmers don’t own their chickens? Big-Agra does. People who raise the birds don’t choose what to feed them and they don’t choose the medicines they might receive.
When you buy fertilized eggs to raise chickens, you have to buy food from companies like Monsanto … and they won’t tell you what’s in the feed. So the farmer is feeding chickens and selling them to you without knowing what they’re feeding the chicken. And you don’t have any right to know.
Yet you can tell from the nature of the chicken we get today that something’s not right. Chickens grow huge incredibly fast. In as little as 81/2 weeks instead of a year or more… yet sellers can get away with saying that they’re doing it without hormones. All the chicken farmers swear on a stack of Bibles, “No, we don’t add any hormones” because they’re ignorant of it. But there have to be hormones in there for them to grow than fast.
Plus, you can tell from the nature of the chicken. You go and buy a chicken from an old-fashioned local farmer and you remember what chicken used to taste like.
Then you go and buy these things at the grocery store and they’re these mushy, big-breasted steroid balls… the consistency is wrong.
The meat isn’t stringy any more. You bite into it and the fibers of the muscle are gone. It’s a big white puffy mess like you’re biting into a doughnut.
When you eat a real chicken you remember how the meat was darker, and stringy. There are striations to the meat that you feel when you pull the meat off the bone. It strips off in one direction and you can’t just bite it and bite through it.
And if you went to cut it, you would only be able to cut along the striation and not across the meat. Now you slice through it like you’re slicing a piece of cake. Your Thanksgiving turkey is like a big loaf of bread.
And think about it… that’s what bodybuilders on steroids are like. They’re big steroid puff balls. That’s what you’re eating.
But, I’m here to help. Today, we’re very fortunate to have a lot of like-minded people who are starting to raise chickens in pastures, where they belong. And they don’t use soy-based feed or pump the chickens full of hormones.
You can find quite a few farms that raise chickens GMO-free and steroid free – they get to roam around literally free as a bird. Many are sustainable ranches, and are family owned. I use the website localharvest.com to find farms near me in South Florida.
But you can buy pasture-raised poultry directly online now because farmers are responding by supply more of them to the market. You can now get them both locally and over the Internet.
The places I recommend are:
- palousepasturedpoultry.com – the birds roam and graze on green grass and receive no growth hormones, supplements, artificial preservatives, or animal by-products.
- hickorynutgapfarm.com – Free-range chickens are raised on farmland that now has a permanent conservation easement so it will be a farm for all time.
- shadygroveranch.net – all animals get certified organic feed that is GMO-free and soy-free
- garciafarms.com – small, family-owned farm has been raising chickens for over 40 years.
- maryschickens.com – Pitman family farms pasture raises chickens in California that live a lifestyle and have an environment that is closest to their natural state.
- rayfamilyfarms.com – the birds are never caged and raised outside in the sunlight
You can find out more information on local pasture-raised chicken at:
- American Grassfed Association (americangrassfed.org) – Certifies farms and ranches around the country, works with the USDA to standardize what pasture-raised means, and has news and even recipes.
- US Wellness Meats (grasslandbeef.com) – A resource for naturally produced meat, with videos and insight from experts.
- American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (apppa.org) – Nonprofit educational and networking organization dedicated to encouraging the production, processing, and marketing of poultry raised on pasture.
- Local Harvest (localharvest.org) – A complete index of farms near you.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD