"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] agroparistechfr> wrote in message 
news:4accbcd9$1@news.povray.org...
> Organic livestock farming is indeed difficult. It's generally more work 
> and the resulting product is more expensive due to longer production 
> cycles. With true organic livestock, it is very hard to feed and treat 
> animals and get as much milk/eggs/meat as in non-organic farming. In 
> French supermarkets, prices for organic chicken are 2 to 3 times higher 
> than for "standard" chicken ("Label" and certified chickens are expensive 
> too, but less so). One solution is selling directly to customers: a 
> colleague of mine just quit his job to become an organic sheep farmer 
> (lamb meat). He advertises on local open markets and has a few dozens of 
> customers in a 30-km radius (IIRC) that he knows personally. Because there 
> is no middlemen his prices are actually attractive compared to 
> supermarkets. Of course this is for lamb and I don't know how it works in 
> poultry (and I hope he's got his business model well figured out...).
>

There is a provision in the law that allows us to sell chickens from our 
home in a similar way.  We really don't have a farm in the usual sense, just 
2.5 acres of land.  I use 1 acre for the chickens, which I put in a movable 
pen that gets dragged around the yard.  Suffice it to say that our grass in 
that part of the yard is very green.  :-)  When they get bigger, I often let 
them run around the yard in the evenings.  As a result, I believe our 
chickens are better than nearly all chickens that get the "organic" term 
stamped on them.  The only thing I do differently is that I don't feed them 
a certified organic feed.  But instead, they spend nearly their entire lives 
outdoors, eating grass and bugs, and whatever else they might want to 
sample.  That's where a "Label Rouge" type of designation would be nice.

We'd like to raise lamb, too.  From talking with friends, it only takes one 
season.  Buy them in the spring, and then they're ready in the fall. 
Unfortunately, I'd probably have to reduce the number of chickens we raise. 
We just don't have enough land for both at the same time.

Anyway, out of the 300 chickens we raised this year, we're keeping about 40 
for ourselves, many of which have already been eaten.  It works out such 
that I can raise my own chickens for free, by selling the rest.  It's not 
"profit" in the usual sense of the word, but it works for us.  It's a hobby 
that I enjoy, and my wife is enjoying it more and more as well.  I've 
estimated around 100 man-hours for this last 150 chicken batch.  That's 
probably a couple orders of magnitude higher than chickens raised in a 
conventional setting.

Mostly, I feel like I'm offering something to our community at a reasonable 
price.  If anyone balks at the price, I really don't care; they can buy 
their chicken from Walmart at the cheapest price possible.

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