086 A deposit based farming business model, dual purpose chicken breeds, Chicken processing in China

This weeks updates on the farm include our ongoing saga of selling pork sausage :)  Want some?  We als otalk pre-deposits and our business model as well as some of the lessons learned in appraoching farm sales with a deposit model. We have turkey orders coming up as well on the last day of the 2013 CSA! Ohh, and there was an areal predator strike on one of our chickens too...  but she's fine!

Hey - if you haven't visited FarmTek.com yet and shopped their great selection of items - now is the time.  By using the promoton code (listen to the episode for the code) when you check out you can save $25 on an order of $75 or more...  and to help you do that we spend some time in this episode talking baout some of the great FarmTek poultry products we use on our farm.

In the CoopCast Community we answer a pair of questions from Scott and Maggie about dual purpose chicken breeds and telling if a gilt is pregnant.

In the "In The News" segment we talk about the USDA decision to let US grown chicken leav the country, head to China, get processed and then sent back to the US as a food product.  Sounds like another well thought out government program to us!

Chicken from China reading includes:

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/c3dab827-151d-4373-917f-139db6a2466d/China_2013_Poultry_Processing.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57601738/officials-say-okay-to-processed-chicken-from-china/