Our chickens (pictured above!) are Cornish Rock Cross, a common breed. (We may try heritage breeds in the future, but they take longer to reach maturity and are thus more expensive to raise.) Our farmer, Dave, gets newborn chicks from a hatchery. Their first home is a brooding house in a pasture. The chicks have access to the outdoors and choose to venture outside starting when they are a couple of days to a couple of weeks old, depending on the weather. After about three weeks, Dave coaxes the birds into a moveable pen. The pen consists of a large fence enclosing part of a pasture, anywhere from 80 feet square to 400 feet square, depending on the number of birds. Inside the pen is a mobile house where the chickens sleep. Dave moves the pen from one pasture to another when the chickens use up all the grass in the area; by the time they reach maturity, at about three months, Dave is moving the pen 2 to 3 times a week. The chickens forage for grass, plants, insects, and grains, and Dave supplies them with water and a vegetarian grain mix in their house.
On the day of shechita, Dave, Naf the shochet, and a team of LoKo volunteers work together to perform the shechita, kasher, and process the chickens. The work takes place in a barn on a neighboring farm. The birds rest quietly on a bed of straw in a trailer outside the barn and show little sign of stress during the day.
