MEET THE FARMERS
KURT & BETTY SONNTAG
"Our chickens are able to live a more natural and happy life"
We are totally mom and pop. It is just Betty and I doing the complete process, here outside of Willis Texas in the Sam Houston National Forest. Our feed is sourced from exclusively from Texas Naturals, outside of Waco Texas. They provide us with a non-soy, non-GMO, non-medicated feed product that they independently test to insure that it meets or exceeds a higher than organic standard. Our baby chicks come from Murray McMurray Hatchary in Iowa.
We raise the chicks, process them and deliver them. We handle each bird every day from the day they arrive to the day we deliver to you. They are processed by hand, with no machinery except a plucker. That's too difficult to do by hand! Our permit only allows for 10,000 birds a year (192 chickens a week approximately). Sanderson Farms and their subsidiaries in Bryan College Station has 2 processing plants and each plant is capable of doing over 1,000,000 birds a week. They do not grow them so you have no idea what they are made of.
Our Process is very labor intensive. We feed and water by hand twice a day, which makes the chicks run and get exercise. When a run is empty, we till the pen and return the chicken waste to the ground to decompose. Then we take the organic chicken scratch and till it into the ground. This mix of barley, wheat, sorghum, sunflowers, corn, and millet grows for 2-4 weeks before the new chicks are let out to run in the grass; eat the grass and crickets, and grasshoppers. This gives them extra nutrients that aren't available in just vegetarian feed alone. They also get to act like chickens. With all the extra space; they get to run in, and play in the dirt like chickens are supposed to do.
Most of their life is spent outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Our pens provide 8-10 square feet per bird; unlike the large farms that are required by law to have only 1.6 square feet per bird. Our layers have approximately 110 square feet per bird to run around in. At night, there is no light left on for them so they get a real day and night cycle, unlike factory raised birds, which are raised in the dark. This produces fewer stress hormones and they are able to live a more natural and happy life.
The chickens feed tests are better than organic standards. They have less than 3% GMO material. It contains no antibiotics or steroids. Organic labels allow certain types and levels of both. Our supplier also tests for glyphosate which organic standards do not require.
When our chickens are processed, we air chill them to REDUCE moisture and body weight. Chicken in the store has up to 15% saline solutions pumped into it so you are buying 15% salt water. All processing is by hand so each bird is visually inspected inside and out by us. We do the packaging and weighing by hand on a Department of Agriculture Certified digital scale.
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IF YOU WOULD LIKE A TOUR OF PEACH CREEK POULTRY PLEASE CONTACT US TODAY