Retiring

When we started selling chickens in 2012, retiring was not even in my vocabulary. Now 10 years later, we’ve decided to retire from selling chickens. Some have asked why, and I’ll try to give some of the back story.

Raising chickens is a 24×7 vocation. As such, it keeps you pretty close to home, which for us was fine for a season – my Mother was living and taking care of her kept us close to home too. All of our children and grandchildren were within a 2 mile radius, thus we had no desire to be anywhere else.

When my Dad was living, he would often come to visit us and help in what ever project we had going on. His presence was not only a physical help, but a guiding influence on my sons. I wanted to do the same for my children – and as they were all close to home, it was not a problem.

In the last 2 years, 3 of our children with 4 of the grandchildren have moved to Montana. My mother passed away in 2020 from Covid, and we found ourself in a large, mostly empty, house. When Mom passed, we realized that it was the chickens that kept us home.

We continued to ship started pullets until mid-summer 2021, weekly transporting them up to the U.S. Postal Service distribution center in Coppell, Texas, so as to shorten the amount of time the pullets would spend being shipped. That was until the workers at the distribution center sent back 70 boxes, After several appeals to the Postal Service, it became apparent that they were not going to refund the over $3,000 we had paid for postage and that in reality they simply did not want our business anymore. We were able to sell out our existing flocks locally, and then for the first time in many years, we did not have any chickens in our brooders.

When the door recently opened for us to travel to Montana to help one of our sons build a house, we loaded up the fifth wheel – and we are still in Montana working with our sons.

That leads us to the question:

Where can you get started pullets?

This has been the number one question since people have heard that we are retiring from raising chickens. The good news is that we have friends here in Montana, the Brandstadts, who are raising, selling and shipping started pullets. They operate Heritage Pullets at Brandstadt Family Farm and have been raising, selling and shipping started pullets for longer than we have. The postal center they take the birds to has been very supportive of their operation. I’ve seen the Brandstadt’s operation and can recommend them without any reservation. You can order online from their website https://www.HeritagePullets.com/ or email them at bdfamilyfarm@gmail.com .