Southern Oregon Poultry Group

According to Joel Salatin, in his talk at the Oregon Rural Action Annual Convention, the average person eats around 60 pounds of chicken per year. He figures that this alone could support roughly 15-18 farmers in an area the size of La Grande (~12,000 people), if everyone who could, would buy their chicken from their local farmer. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

The Southern Oregon Poultry Group is working to change that. When the local poultry processor decided to retire, a group of 10 families began talking about their options. After several months of discussion and organization, the group officially became an LLC and purchased a plucker, a scalder, a stainless steel table, kill cones, and a trailer for a mobile, on-farm poultry processing unit. Each family bought into the group for $360 and they have developed a lottery system for scheduling harvest dates among themselves. Everyone is responsible for leaving the equipment clean and back on the trailer, ready for use by the next in line. About half the families in the Poultry Group use the equipment to process chicken and turkey for their own use. The other half has seen this as an opportunity to offer on-farm sales of their pastured poultry to their community.

Currently, some members of the group are considering what it would mean to get the mobile processing unit state-certified so that their birds could be sold to restaurants, grocery stores and at farmers’ markets, or if there are other options available to them. Others do not want to pursue certification. For more information on the Southern Oregon Poultry Group and this project, contact Suzanne Willow of Willow Witt Ranch at 541-890-1998.