Macedonia family raises grass-fed chickens

An old-fashioned “small town girl” is running a new-fashioned business in Cherokee – she and her family grow all-natural meat chickens on pasture, to supply the growing movement of people who like their food fresh, local and without additives.

Carolyn Mathews | Ledger-News Mary Beth Sellars raises meat chickens on pasture on her 8-acre farm. The chickens are kept in a pen-on-wheels, called a trailer, that is moved daily to a new grassy spot. Each chicken needs about 2 square feet for healthy growth.

“I’m from Richland, Ga., about 30 miles south of Columbus,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to farm; I like to garden, and we’ve had chickens, goats and sheep.”

Her first effort to raise chickens for eating was last year, when she and two friends went in on a cooperative effort – the friends paid for the baby chicks and the feed and Sellars raised them on the family’s 8-acre farm, providing enough meat to stock all three women’s freezers for the year.

Sellars said early this year, she and her husband were watching “Food Inc.,” a 2008 documentary on corporate farming practices in the United States, which highlights alleged animal abuses and environmental abuses the documentary says results in unhealthy food. 

“We decided to make an investment, so that we can provide clean meat for others,” she said. “We as a family care for our chickens.”

Sellars said it’s kind of odd how “sustainability” has recently become in vogue.

“That’s the way people lived up until the last 15 years,” she said. “Most canned and packaged food didn’t even become available until the 1950s.” 

Carolyn Mathews | Ledger-News Three-week-old chickens feed off the grass on Mary Sellers’ farm.

She also keeps laying hens, which provide fresh eggs for her family and friends, but her 12-year-old daughter is expanding that business, and will be selling fresh eggs shortly.

Sellars keeps the birds she raises, Cornish Crosses, for eight weeks before harvesting them, compared to large chicken houses, where she said the average chicken is raised in 43 days.

The birds arrive at the post office in boxes of 50, and she receives six boxes of day-old chicks at a time, from her supplier in Ohio. 

She said she uses a hatchery with a good reputation in the business, and her chicks come still attached to their placentas, which provides them with all the nourishment they need until they arrive on the farm.

At the farm, the chickens go into breeder boxes, where a light warms them, keeping the temperature at 95 degrees. At three weeks, the birds go onto pasture. They are kept in rolling “trailers,” which are pens with no bottom. Every day, the pens are rolled, along with the chickens inside, to fresh pasture.

In addition to grass, the chicks are fed a corn/soy/sunflower seed feed and water. Seven-year-old son Billy is responsible for keeping the chicken’s water holders full.

“Naomi does everything we do – including feeding and raking,” Sellars said.

She said she  is one of the only natural growers in the immediate area, and she believes she has found a niche market. 

“Several people raise enough (grass-fed) chickens to supply themselves and their families, but we are the only ones that raise meat for the public around here,” she said. 

Sellars doesn’t use vaccinations, steroids or antibiotics. 

“We have a healthy, clean flock,” she said. She includes apple cider vinegar regularly in the birds’ water to keep them healthy. Every bird, she said, needs about 2 square feet of pasture to thrive.

After eight weeks, the birds are killed in a kosher method, using stainless steel killing cones, which hold the chicken upside down and allow all the blood to drain from the body after the jugular is cut, she explained. Then the birds’ head and feet are removed, they are gutted and defeathered, and put on ice. 

Each chicken weighs four to six pounds, providing two meals, Sellars said. She sells the chickens whole, for $12, but teaches customers how to cut them up into parts.

“The meat is so much tastier,” she said, noting that she uses all the chicken, even boiling the carcass for soup broth. She also noted that the fresh meat is denser, since it isn’t grown so quickly, and a smaller amount provides more nutrition and goes further than store-bought chicken does.

Sellars will continue raising chickens until November, but then will stop production until spring. Next year, she hopes to raise Naked Necks, as well as Cornish Crosses.

Daughter Naomi has Polish, Americana and Black Austrolorp hens, and will be selling eggs in a few weeks, as her hens mature.  Her business is called “Sissy’s Farm Fresh Eggs.”

For more information, visit www.joyfulnoiseacresfarm.com.