Monday, June 7, 2010

Buxton Farm Broilers

Restocking the brooder with 1200 new chicks

Chicks crawling over Mrs. Murphy's boots

nipple drinkers, they worked very well

1200 Cornish Cross chicks

Day old chicks, they're quite cute


Catching chicks to bring to pasture

Young chickens on pasture

30 chicken tractors in the Broiler Field

Catching birds for processing

400 birds caught and loaded

Ready for processing to begin

Polyface intern Ben working at the kill station

Mr. Murphy and Polyface apprentice Nathen ready to start


Mr. and Mrs Murphy and Polyface intern Amanda

QC table

The chickens necks are slit and they bleed out in the cones

The messy job


The chickens chill in these tanks for about three hours or until they're about 40 degrees

Freezers full of chicken

Composting the feathers, blood and guts. It's makes some of the best compost


Building chicken tractors

Field feed storage

5 comments:

  1. Very slick operation! I'm assuming that Buxton farm is using the fast grow broilers. Do you know what the percentage of bird mortality was for them? I love the shot of all those chicks under Mrs. Murphy's skirt - very cute!

    Mrs. Bryan - Only 5 days till wedding day!

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  2. Uumm. GREAT blog at first! AAhh! I can't believe you put slottering pictures on your blog. YUCK! First you get us all 'oooh' and aahh'ing over these simply adorable little yellow fuzz balls THEN you pull out the big guns and show us the slotter! Innocence was BLISS Jon. Ew!
    lol.

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  3. Both at Polyface and Buxton they raise the Cornish Cross power growers. Joel is raising a few heritage breed this year. There isn't the market for the smaller birds, everyone expects big breasted chickens.

    Cousin - that's farming :)

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  4. I really liked that picture too Mrs. Bryan!

    We miss your family Murphy's!

    Krista Joy

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  5. The pictures are beautiful. My daughters and I visited the Polyface farm in Virginia a couple
    years ago. I grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania. We live in California, but miss
    the farm. Your blog brings back pleasant memories. We dream of purchasing acreage to raise some animals in another state for ourselves and for our daughters and their future spouses, if God wills. Thank you for
    the inspiration!

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