At 5 1/2 weeks old the chickens are fully grown and ready for the market. Processing the chickens was a new experience for everyone so I had some experienced poultry farmers come out to give us a hand.
We selected a couple of random chickens to process and found their average weight to be about 1.5kg. This was an ideal market weight for our chickens so we began the harvest. With no electricity, refrigeration or ice we could only work a few hours before making the one hour drive into town to freeze them. With almost 300 chickens it took us three days to process our entire flock.
Fortunately, the children were on vacation from school during April so we were able to have the older village orphans help us out. They were eager to try something new and we found they were very good at feather removal which is the most time consuming part of processing a chicken. The final result of our efforts resulted in an organic, farm fresh chicken just like what we purchase in the local American supermarket. No growth hormones, antibiotics or additives of any kind.
For some reason there were two chickens that had stunted growth and were not big enough to take to market. Maybe they it was their lucky day but we didn't process them so they now have the entire coop to themselves. Everyone at the orphan feeding center was proud of their contribution to the success of the project and we took a group photo after it was all over. There was a reason to be proud since this was the first sustainability project completed by the OGRA Foundation to realize a profit. Hopefully it will become an income generating activity to keep the orphan feeding center open and provide jobs for the local community.
I met a woman who found a smart way to keep her chicken farm fresh. She simply took a live chicken home in a basket. No refrigeration needed. Brilliant!
The final pictures were taken as we handed out some donated clothes to the children at the orphan feeding center. I saw this 2 year old girl whose mother is suffering from AIDS and I thought she was beautiful. You will see her receiving an orange blouse in the final photo. All the kids patiently lined up and waited as we sorted the clothes by size before trying to find an appropriate matching child. There was no pushing or shoving and everyone was pleased with whatever they received. Even some of the adult helpers at the feeding center found stylish shirts to wear. I plan to donate some of my clothes to them before I return home.
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