Poultry Processing Workshop

I wanted to hear your feedback on a new workshop we are offering this season on our farm in Pennsylvania. We are doing a farm tour along with a chicken processing workshop. We raise all our birds organically on pasture and you will be able to take a chicken from pasture to oven ready bird, and take that bird home with you. Every participant will get the following:

Tour our Pastures:  Get up close and personal with our happy, healthy chickens foraging on lush pastures. Learn firsthand about our commitment to ethical and regenerative farming practices.
Humane Processing:  We'll guide you through the process with respect and care, demonstrating how to humanely harvest a chicken in our state-inspected facility.  (Participation is optional, but encouraged!)
Butchering Basics:  Transform a whole chicken into culinary gold!  Master essential techniques for breaking down the bird and preparing different cuts for a variety of delicious dishes.
Take-Home Treasure:  Leave with the pride of knowing you participated in bring that meal from pasture to plate for you to enjoy with your friends and family.
Keep the Memories:  Download photos from your day, allowing you to share with others all about your experience.

My question for all of you would be, what would you say is a fair price for this experience? Keep in mind, our birds retail for on average, $25/bird. So you get to take home one that you process. We will cap this off at 10 people.

Some questions;
- What time length will the workshop be?
- Is lunch provided?
- Can you camp overnight?

Workshop will be about 5 hours. 1 hour for the tour, the rest is processing time along with loads of information and Q&As. No lunch. And camping overnight probably would not work because I was doing this on a Saturday with a 2PM start. Saturday mornings most of us are busy at the markets and only have 1 farm hand hang back and take care of farm chores while the rest of us all go to markets.

Thats not a bad thought though if I readjusted the schedule somehow. That is something I will keep in mind.

A humane workshop is a great idea. $25.00 is a small price to pay for this learning experience, especially since folks get to take home the meat.

Anne Miller wrote:A humane workshop is a great idea. $25.00 is a small price to pay for this learning experience, especially since folks get to take home the meat.

$25 is just the retail value of the chicken. So the whole workshop/tour would be more. I am thinking $100 total for the whole experience, including copies of photos from the day (professional photographer), your chicken and all the education.

$25 is just the retail value of the chicken. So the whole workshop/tour would be more. I am thinking $100 total for the whole experience, including copies of photos from the day (professional photographer), your chicken and all the education.

Is this a recent idea or has this come up several times as a request from your customers?

Have you considered shortening the time and using as a tool to sell a chicken CSA, meat CSA, produce CSA, etc. rather than a profit center?

I don't know anything about your situation so this is what I have seen advertised in the past.

Josh Hoffman wrote:

$25 is just the retail value of the chicken. So the whole workshop/tour would be more. I am thinking $100 total for the whole experience, including copies of photos from the day (professional photographer), your chicken and all the education.

Is this a recent idea or has this come up several times as a request from your customers?

Have you considered shortening the time and using as a tool to sell a chicken CSA, meat CSA, produce CSA, etc. rather than a profit center?

I don't know anything about your situation so this is what I have seen advertised in the past.

It has come up in the past and people asked, and I did do small little workshops for those that requested it if it was only 1 or 2 people. But in the past, we had a much smaller facility and couldn't really give a quality experience. Now that we can with our new facility up, it warranted a revisit.

As for the CSA, selling my chicken is not a problem at all. Quite the opposite, we have trouble raising enough. Our CSA's sold out extremely quick.

To give a little more background, in our area we have built a loyal following and very high demand. So much so, that we often sell out within the first hour of markets opening. Some cases, we were left with soup bones and organ meat after the first 10 minutes.  We have been slowly upgrading over the years, completely self funded by the farms profits and some of our own personal investments with the goal of providing more of our pasture raised chicken to our community and meet that demand. Last year we maxed out with what we had. Brooders full, chicken tractors full and processing area maxed out. So this season, we focused on upping our processing capacity. Next year, brooders and pasture infrastructure will be upgraded and we should start serving our customers a little better. Running things like workshops seemed like a good way give something extra to folks who may find it of interest, and help us fund our next expansion.

Running things like workshops seemed like a good way give something extra to folks who may find it of interest, and help us fund our next expansion.

Okay, that makes sense. I am afraid this is the limit to my input. I am not sure how to charge for something like that. Sounds like a neat idea.

The farm we bought our stuff from for a year, a while back, would let me come volunteer. I learned a lot and helped process chickens. It cost me my time only.