Welcome back to another episode of Freedom Blueprint podcast. I'm your host, Justin Deese. And today I am joined by my amazing wife, Kristen. Welcome to the studio. Thanks. So what I wanted to talk about today is ⁓ for those of you listening, you know, we kind of went through this chicken project. Yes. Would you you call it a project? It was a project for sure.

So a little bit of back. Well, I'll you give a little bit of the backstory Well, it all started like 20 years ago when Netflix came out and they started putting out these documentaries about food That's I think honestly where it probably started. Yeah I think my mom actually had a lot to do with it too because she jumped on the bandwagon before yeah before I did but but anyway

We have been interested in where our food comes from and how it's processed for a long time, but ⁓ didn't really do a whole lot about it besides the purchasing organic stuff when we could and whatever. We're not super strict about it, but anyway, so ⁓ we bought some land, we moved out to the farm, we're trying ⁓ our hand in some.

we're gonna call it homesteading activities, although oddly enough, the target marketing also calls it prepping, which I'm not really on board with, because I don't think that I'm a conspiracy theorist, but anyway. Being prepared has nothing to do with being a conspiracy theorist. It's just being prepared. You never know what could happen, and you wanna be prepared, and obviously we want to know.

We want to be able to make sure that if something were to happen, which we obviously don't want anything to happen, but we're prepared. We can take care of ourselves. ⁓ So we're taking some steps to kind of work on that. This property that we bought that we're living on now has a natural spring that comes up and runs through the backyard. So we would always have water if that ever was an issue. And we're getting a generator put in in a couple of months and just.

Just some stuff to kind of be a little bit more grounded to the ground, I guess you could say. I wonder if people are picturing barefoot running around the woods like Lord of the Flies. Well, I've never seen Lord of the Flies. What? I know I grew up under a rock. Remember? However, I do like being how we married this long and I've never. Didn't know that apparently it's been a while since I've watched it. If it's a movie from the 80s or 90s, there's a really good chance I did not watch it. That's true. That's true.

Anyway, so So we wanted to get into Well, first of all, I have learned that the only thing I can grow really well are weeds not yeah weeds plural and So some ears perked up when you said I know gardening isn't necessarily my gig

I'm surprised that you don't have that gene, that green thumb. know it's frustrating too. Like I can't grow anything like you walked in the studio and if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the plant behind me. And I feel like every, every time Kristen comes in the studio, she says, have you watered that plant? And I don't know why, but my same answer is always no. It's a plant in the house. Well, no, he's like, I didn't know it was real every time. Every time he's like, didn't know it was a real plant. I don't know how photosynthesis works indoors.

But that's not the point. It cleans your air anyway. I can do house plants. I can't do outside plants. It's just our ground here is basically sand and some clay and it takes a lot of working anyway. It doesn't matter. So, but I can keep creatures alive really well usually. And so, so I thought, okay, well, if we want to take a step into this, like,

farming slash homesteading thing, but we don't want a long-term commitment like larger creatures yet. We're not in a place in our life, right, where we can really do that at the moment. But chickens, specifically meat chickens, that's really only like a eight to 10 week commitment per batch. And so- It's amazing to know it now, obviously, because we went through the process, but I remember with us talking about it.

And that's going OK. It's a eight eight week plan. I'm eight weeks from up from a chick to the time it hits the grill. Yes. Yep. Eight weeks, eight weeks for this particular breed. There are other breeds of meat chickens that do take a little bit longer to mature. buy an express chicken. Yeah. The fast lane chicken. ⁓ So that was kind of a way that we could say, right, well, we're kind of getting into it a little bit, but it's not a long term commitment. We get something we can see, you know, do we like it?

And so anyway, that's kind of how it even came up in the first place as an option to do. So I want to say this real quick for anybody listening. I promise this is going to get to business. You're listening. You're like, I don't care about chickens. I don't have any intention on raising chickens. It's fine. But like most things in life, there is a there's a lot of lessons that we learned. And we really want to share those lessons ⁓ with with you and just kind of talk through what we learned, how we tie it to business and ⁓

plus we like to share. So it's kind of fun. We might be able to turn into a keynote one day. ⁓ for sure. For sure. How I raise chickens. So so once we started talking about chickens. ⁓ What's the first thing we had to do is we had to come up with a plan. Yes. Right. Well, yeah, we did. We did a lot of research at the beginning to even figure out what we're getting into. ⁓ Did we have the resources that we needed in order to be able to pull this off?

Did we have the time needed in order to be able to do it? ⁓ So there was a pretty good amount of research lots and lots and lots of YouTube videos that we watched and ⁓ Just I think honestly we probably had did more research on this project than we've probably done on any other on any other venture that that we've done so ⁓ Definitely that ties to business in the way of ⁓ being educated before we even get started

⁓ nothing replaces the actual experience of doing it, but we were not walking into it totally blind. Well, we, yes, we had some good education and you know, we, we talk about this with business owners a lot of times they'll spend more time and energy on planning a vacation than planning their business. So again, this chicken process really gave us, ⁓ an opportunity where we learned something new.

And we had to go out into the world and we had to decipher good information, bad information, because just like anything else in the world, you go out there and there's lots of opinions. And, ⁓ we wanted to be very careful about finding facts, not really opinions. Like we don't, we're not looking, that doesn't help us move the needle. So, ⁓ I mean, everything down to, ⁓ the, the knives that we used to the.

know, chicken, like everything was down to a plan and we had to have all these things before we even started. Yeah, so there's stages of the growth process for these birds. that's so.

We had to find them. We defined the chicks. We had to find a hatchery that we could get the chicks from, which Justin did a lot of the research there and found them and got them on order, which was not as easy. Yeah. As you would think. Well, OK. So it was also the same time frame that like this is the year of the chicken. So everybody is I don't actually know if it's the year of the chicken, but it feels like it is. Everybody for some reason now wants to be have chickens in their backyard for eggs. And so we went through a time period where finding chicks was almost impossible. Yeah. And so

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managed to find some and get them on order well they get sent here in a box in a very small in a very small box so that was a little like you know you worry about these chicks they're in a box they're literally getting sent by UPS or USPS which is probably even worse and and we're like impatiently waiting on the call to come get the birds because you have to go down to the post office and pick them up it is an interesting

that I mean obviously this is the first time we've ever done this but I've never gone to the post office to pick up live animals. Yeah right. And I walk in

to the post office, that was definitely a new experience. So I go to the post office and I'm like, hey, I'm here to pick up some chickens and I can hear them tweeting in the background. You sure you didn't say you're here to pick up chicks? I'm here to pick up the chicks. So they go and they give me this box. This like it's about the size of a laptop. It's thicker than a laptop. But it's a boot box. Yeah, like a good, good size boot box. Yeah. And they hand me the box.

There's 50 chicks in there. Well, I was standing there and she's like, you need anything else? was like, I'm assuming there's more boxes. They said, no, that's all you got. It was like, huh, I feel like this is probably only half the order or quarter of the order. No way there's 50 chickens in this box. So there was, there was 50. Yeah. So you bring them home. So the first part of the process. So just like with business, right?

⁓ there's a couple parts and you have to change your systems throughout the way as the business grows, right? So some of the early systems in the business work well when the business is small, but as it gets bigger and as it grows, you have to adapt your systems to the growing business. Okay, well the same thing went with these birds, right? So when they're little, they have to be in a brooder because they need heat and you know, whatever. And so they're inside in the garage in these big water troughs that we have, put...

So we ordered 50, Justin ordered 50 chicks. ⁓ he said when he was placing the order, how many do you think I should get? And I said, I don't know, like 20 or 25. So of course he orders 50. That's how that goes. Go bigger, go home. That's right. And so with that many chicks, we ended up having two separate brooders. So we split them in half and, and had two separate brooders. So there was a whole system every day, twice a day, actually, when they were in there that we had to do to clean them out and make sure that they, whatever they

were way messier than I think I ever would have ⁓ thought of, like in general the whole time. So that first couple weeks, they were in the garage ⁓ under a heat lamp eating just until their hearts desired, which they eat lot. Had a couple losses early on.

A couple of little setbacks, which of course is just like business growth. We lost two or three of them within probably the first two weeks or so. But then we leveled out and managed to keep them alive for a longer than that.

And then they got to a certain size and they needed to move outside. It was time. ⁓ They were getting too big for their enclosure. The systems that we were using to keep them happy and healthy and clean were not working anymore because they were getting too big. So it was time that we needed to change it up. ⁓ Again, ties right back to business. that whole thing is when we identified that the systems were not working, we had to upgrade them.

And then they got moved outside. Yep. So, getting moved outside, you know, part of the plan with that was to, ⁓ you know, you hear the term free range chickens. And I think, I know for me, when I first heard that, thought they just ran wild, like just all over the place. But, what we did was we have them in a enclosure that gets moved every day. And so they get fresh grass and fresh bugs and they fertilize and it's amazing.

when you see where they were, how green the grass was after they're eating and pooping and digging it up. It's amazing fertilizer. It is amazing fertilizer. never, again, we did some...

research in the beginning, this is part of the reason why we chose to raise them this way, ⁓ is that they fertilize the ground that they're on. I never in a million years would have realized, one, how quickly you could see the result on that, ⁓ and how dramatic the result was. I never, ever would have guessed that it would be like that. You can see the exact squares where they were, and it's like the deepest green that you've ever seen. And then you can see next to it a square where they were, and it's like yellow. ⁓

So anyway, so we ⁓ moved them outside. So that changed our system. Now. ⁓ Now we're only doing about once a day, once a day for sure. We would move it and then I would check on them in the afternoon just to make sure they had enough water. But heat started to become a problem. So we had to make some adjustments on heat. It was getting very warm. Had to provide some additional shade for them to keep them cool. Florida heat. Learned that I was actually overfeeding them. ⁓ I thought that I should just keep feed out all the time and they can eat whenever they want to.

and it turns out they will overeat. So I had to restrict the amount of food that they were getting every day, ⁓ which it's a good thing we did because they were going through, I want to say 15 pounds of food a day. Which is a lot. Even though they were on grass. ⁓ But it was quite interesting. Well if it's going to be, I mean it's just like people, right? If it's hunt and gatherer.

Or hit the buffet. Yeah, right, right. They're gonna hit the buffet. So one of the things that I thought was really cool is that once we moved them outside, every day we would move this enclosure. It literally just, it was just sliding it forward. At first the birds didn't know what was happening and so like every now and then one would get kind of little stuck under there or whatever.

But then towards like after we did it for a week or two, they started realizing that when I came out there to move it, that means they were going to get on fresh grass. And so they would all come towards the front of the enclosure and get ready to be moved except for one or two dumb ones. I mean, they're chickens. I feel like I can relate that whole thing to us. We had a system. Everybody was on board except for one or two. Nobody relates to that. Nobody. And so so they got to a point that I was that they knew that

if I was out there that we were fixing to move and that they were going to be getting on on fresh grass and they would come to the front and we would slide it and it would go so much faster because they knew the system. Right. ⁓ So that was actually kind of cool. I didn't figure that. You know what the truth is? They didn't know the system. They knew the result. Right. So so they knew like you had to know the system to make sure that it happened. But it was the result that they were after. So as you're moving it, they're like.

crap, here's the result is I get fresh grass ⁓ and it kind of goes back to the, you know, pay attention to the reward when it comes to the system and it comes to the team. Yeah. For a short period. mean, they were on the team. They were on, they were on their own team freezer, but yeah. So yeah. So then, ⁓ then, then we got to a point where we had to start getting serious about processing day because they were getting quite big. ⁓

They, ⁓ and we knew that that was going to be a whole process that we would need to plan out in advance. ⁓ because that was at least a day. It actually ended up being two separate days, but, ⁓ that was. Yeah. And it's, and it's one thing to have a chicken and feed it. It's another thing to process a chicken. Yeah. So, ⁓ go going back to, to what we first started talking about is one of the deals with this whole project.

I guess we'll call it was that we had to have a plan and we had the end in mind. So we knew the end was we were, we were going to have 50 ish give or take ish chickens that we were going to be able to eat, that we were going to raise. We were going to know what food they ate, what ground they were on, how they were treated. Like we were going to know all that now.

out of all of the steps, because let's see, technically you've got, and we'll get to the nitty gritty of the, ⁓ butchered day, but so you've got the, okay. Processing. ⁓ so you've got the, ⁓ what would you call the first stage was like the, when they're in the brooder, it's like the early stages. don't know. Yeah. The infancy stage. Sure. don't know. don't know. And then they get to a certain point and then we move them outside.

And that's kind of the, the middle stage, we'll call it. I really wish we could get fancier with the names, but we're not. So then we've got the, the middle stage, which is where they're, they're eating and they're moving, pretty low maintenance at that point. It's, know, the morning you move them, you water them, you feed them. You got to go back and remove the food. was a step that we- Well, I would just let it run out. Right. But I, yeah, I would let it run out. Then we realized that, okay, these chickens are the size of turkeys. We probably should-

do something about that. And then so that's the second stage. And then really, I'm assuming the third stage would really be the processing day. Yeah. And the whole part of it, even though we had done some research in advance, there was a lot of trial and error and, you know, at trying a system, looking to see how whether or not it was working. So evaluate whether or not it was working. And if it was great, continue to do it. And if it wasn't, make tweaks that needed to happen in order to make it work.

better, all of which needs to be happening in the business throughout. ⁓ Finding the system that works well and continuing to do it when we recognize that it works well, I think that's a big one. That's a big one. That's a big one in business. ⁓ We can implement a system in the business that's going well.

if it's going well, have to keep doing it. Right. Right. Like if it's going well, we have to gosh, the system's going so well, we should stop doing it. But also on the same side, if we implement a system and it's not quite going well, like we can't put the system out there and then never look back to see if it's producing the intended result or going the way that we wanted it to go. So we always have to continue to evaluate whether or not it is still serving the purpose that it needs to serve. That was the case the whole time through this.

⁓ cause there was definitely tweaks that had to happen throughout. I can think of one tweak that happened that was the result was the same, but the effort to get there shifted. And it was, we started with the chickens in one place and then the watering process was, you know, there's big five gallon water jugs and having to water them and then carry them. And then as we got around the house, realize that, well, the hose will reach now.

So now you can take the hose, you fill it up and now the water is there for the chickens. So now that process went from a five minute process to a two minute process or 10 to two, whatever it was. But it's that kind of small tweak that, you know, is, it's the effort of carrying the water. It was the effort. Yes. Versus now just filling it up with the hose inside the chicken house. Yeah. Or right outside. outside. Yeah. Um,

Yes, I've kind of liked carrying the water because it was really good workout, but I would not have wanted to do it. Right. ⁓ So, yeah. So. So the the other thing that I think is a good connection to business on all of this, going back to the end in mind is ⁓ I have always been an animal person my entire life and ⁓ I have an empathy for animals. That's probably a little bit unreasonable.

And there's nothing I can do about that. knowing the end in mind when we did this, I really had to work very hard to keep my emotions in check during this whole process. knew from the beginning what was going to, what the end result with these birds were going to be. so I had to make sure that I kept that in check. I do think that is the case for business as well. I think that there's a lot of times that we get emotionally

very involved in our business. ⁓ And when we have to make tough decisions, that emotion gets in our way of making tough decisions that actually need to be made in the business. Yes, I agree. ⁓ So while it doesn't mean that we don't care for it while it is ours, ⁓ we also have to make sure that we are not letting that emotion get into the way of things that actually have to be done. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Because I know, especially for older businesses,

They get anchored down to people that have been there for a very long time, but are underperforming and they get emotionally tied to it. And they're like, I just, I don't have a choice. I've got to keep so-and-so around. you know, as you start going through it you're like, are they performing? No. Do they show up on time? No. Are they good for the culture? No. Or they help drive the business forward? No. But they've been here for 20 years. They've been here for 20 years. Like, great. You've been paying them for 20 years to take up space in your business. Like move on from it. And I think that's a good tie in for

You know, sometimes you got to do hard shit like that. That's it. Sometimes tough stuff has to happen. And that's part of the challenge running a business is there's times you have to do stuff that's uncomfortable and it sucks and it's not popular and it's messy. And people, some people don't like the result or understand why you're doing what you're doing. But at the end of the day, you're you're the leader and it's your job. So, yeah, I think that's a very good tie in for that.

So yeah, so then we ⁓ got to processing day. We borrowed some equipment from some friends ⁓ since it's something that you only use every now and then. And they had it, so we borrowed some equipment and got our plan. We actually bought an online course for processing days. For processing day, just because we wanted to make sure that we were ⁓ doing it right. Right. We've put in all of the work of these last eight or nine weeks. We wanted to make sure that this final step was done correctly.

so that we would have the fruit of our labor. So which, by the way, if anybody is a I'm going to say homesteader or likes that whole thing. So the land is the channel that we followed on YouTube. We'll put a link to them in the in the show notes for YouTube and on the podcast. Check them out. They've got a really good. They've got a really good channel. We they do have a great we watch a lot. We do watch a lot of their stuff. We've been binge watch a lot of their stuff, actually. They do have a good.

So yeah, so we bought the course and we studied on it, ⁓ made sure that we had all the right equipment and all the right things and whatever. And then even did some prepping the evening before, processing day was on a Saturday, did some prepping the evening before. It was Justin and I and our daughter's boyfriend who was helping us on day one. ⁓ It's, early on in the day it was.

Slow moving. couple, was slow moving, but then we got into a really good rhythm and were able to process two thirds of them on that day. ⁓ And then we left the rest for another week and processed the remaining the following week. So partly our plan was to well, we thought we were going to get them all done in the one day and we could have, but we ran out of space. And like if we next time we go to do this.

we could process 40 or 50 in a day. Because we have our system down, right? Like it's not the first time we've done it. ⁓ But this time we underestimated a few things. We were prepared, ⁓ partly because we went to somebody who had already done it, who already been on this journey, and we said, give us the shortcut, because this is not a figured out kind of project to me. You hear stories about people.

processing chicken in the old school way. my gosh. was like, no, no, no, don't want to do that. what's so funny about this is every time we would tell somebody that we're processing chickens, they'd be like, I remember when my grandpa would just pick them up and ring them around like we're not doing and then set them down. We're not we're not doing that. Anyway, so yes, so we got some coaching, basically. Yes, we got some coaching on which was good because then we had all the things laid out and we knew the whole process of the processing.

Because again, you know, now we're talking about not, you really don't want to skip a step in here. You don't want to skip a step in any of them, but really there's, you can't skip. Right. You cannot skip a step in this part of the process because now it's going to be on your table and you're feeding your family and you know, cross contamination and you know, there's some things that you want to be very careful of. ⁓ but it was good because we, I mean, we did, we spent probably 30 minutes at the beginning, just kind of laying out.

Okay, here's what it's going to look like. And we kind of like basically walked through it like this, you know, the, the one bad day for the chicken happens here. And then it goes in the, in the chicken hot tub and it hangs out in the hot tub for like a minute or two. And then it goes in the chicken washer machine, the plucker thingy. then from there it gets right. So we had this whole plan of, what it looked like. Um, again, I think it's such a interesting.

mix of how all that relates to business because so much of it does. And so one of the things is that in this process, we opted to go get help, right? We went to pay somebody to give us the information that we needed to. Okay, so actually, do you remember like the week before processing day and I was like, hey, I'm starting to freak out a little bit.

I don't know if we can do this. Can we just call a processor and see how much it would be to outsource this? So that's kind of the point I was getting to is, you just like in business, you can outsource certain things, right? So, ⁓ you know, digital marketing is a big one, right? Somebody's like, well, I'm not really good at digital marketing. You can outsource that part. So with the chicken process, we could have outsourced literally any of that.

Well, the whole process outsourcing would be go to grocery store and buy it. And not only that, there's different steps to the grocery store. We could go to the Piggly Wiggly. We could go to ⁓ the Dollar General, sell chicken. I don't think so. OK, I don't really get Dollar General, but right. So you go to Piggly Wiggly. Yeah. Or you can go to Publix or Publix or Whole Foods. Right. Or the butcher down the road, actually. And they say it's a different chicken. I'm not convinced it's a different chicken. But so so we could have gone and.

We could outsource the entire project. Just got a chicken from the store, which would have been way cheaper. Well, OK, we'll get to statistics in here in a few minutes, but I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. OK, yeah, we'll see. But we could have outsourced any of it. We could have gotten the chickens when they were already ready to be outside. We could have taken the chickens and taken them to the processor and let them handle that messy part of it. But.

But at no point in that entire process, could any of those systems be skipped? You can't skip feeding them. You can't skip watering them. You can't skip having them in a cage. ⁓ You technically don't have to move them. I mean, when you buy it, when you look at these chicken farms, they don't move them. They all stand on top of each other and I'll bear everybody the details. Cause there's a reason they stink so bad. Let's just say that. Yeah. So, so you could, you could skip that process.

that part of it, but then, and then you can't skip the butchering. And then when you're butchering them, there are certain steps that have to happen in order for that to happen. So there's, there's really not technically any steps that you can skip inside the process. And I think it's the same for a successful business. Yeah. So, ⁓ so we chose not to outsource any of it, but we did get coaching, ⁓ to help. did, did get an online course.

And talk to several people who had already done it before too, which I mean, during that whole research process too, we kind of had to determine, you gather all this information, right? But you can't do and follow every single thing that everybody says. So you kind of have to pick and choose the things, suggestions, ideas, experiences that you hear from and pull the ones that you think are actually relatable to your scenario or to your situation.

⁓ And and use those which I definitely think that we did even in just the processing part between that all you have to do is ring them around the neck or all you have to do is whatever the Suggestions we got over the eight weeks or nine weeks. It's kind of ⁓ But yeah, there was there was definitely multiple levels of help, ⁓ but I'm glad that we Did that got the help? Mm-hmm so that we got the result that we got so

So then we process all the birds. So once we process them all and they were ready for the freezer, we bagged them up, we shrink wrapped them. We did the whole nine yards. They're actually very beautiful. They're very, they look great. They could go straight to the market. really thought they were going to be. I don't know. I know what I thought. Like Haggard looking chicken. I have been on homesteading Facebook groups forever and you see these.

God awful dreadful posts of these people who have never seen one of those, but they target me of these people who process their own birds and they're like, my gosh, I process my bird. Why is it green? Like all these things. And I'm like, we didn't have any of that. No, thank goodness. None of that. Which, by the way, now that I think about that, I think it's because the biosec got popped during processing while the birds green anyway. Side note. And so, but see, now, you know, now I know. Right. Yeah. So

So they're all, they're packaged, they're all beautiful. We put a little label on each one of them that has the year and the weight. So we weighed every single bird and we kind of joked. With excitement. It was very exciting. We kind of joked as they were, you know, still alive that, you know, some of them were quite large. Yeah. Like, like I most definitely overfed them. But whatever.

They're delicious. so ⁓ so they ranged in weight from four. One of the smallest one was four and a half pounds. And the biggest one was eight pounds, four ounces, which for a chicken is almost a turkey. Very big. And all together, we processed 45 chickens, 45 chickens made it all the way through from our original 50, which, by the way, 10 percent loss, I think is probably pretty decent. Like, I'm happy with that.

⁓ We ended up with 275 pounds of meat ⁓ at a market price of like if we were to sell it all, I want to say it was like $17 or $1800 worth of chicken. So on the first batch, we had to buy some few things that you would not have to buy on second batches. So we had to buy the waterers and the feeders, which you would not have to do on future batches. We had to buy the enclosure, which we may or may not use that particular one again. We will not. ⁓

We had to buy the brooders and the heat lamps and all the things the first time around, but again, you use all of that again. So if you were to, and we had to buy a freezer to put all these things in. So then if you took all of that out and just looked at feed, I would say that we're definitely ahead. If we didn't look at the initial capital investment we had to make in the business, it's not a business, it's not a business. The initial capital investment that we had to make, if we just looked at that ongoing cost of goods.

of the fate and stuff, we would have been ahead. Well, we would feed them less. Yes, yes. So again, through time, through experience, you learn things. then. But so here's a good point. From a a coaching perspective, we went and we just went to YouTube to watch videos on this process. The only thing that we really paid money to learn and understand was the

the last processing part. Now what's interesting is that part went flawless. We didn't pay to learn the beginning of it. And I don't know that we ever saw any way to learn. didn't, we didn't pay an expert to say, can you give us the express lane? And because we didn't do that, it did cost us quite a bit more money because we were feeding these heifers, feeding these chicken turkeys, ⁓ so much more than we needed to.

where had we just found an expert to say, Hey, what's the right way to do this? That would have shortened our learning curve. So, you know, again, just like in business, as you do things multiple times, you kind of learn and it becomes almost natural. So not next time we do it, there's so many of these things that just from the second time doing it, that we'll learn from the first time. Yeah, we'll be able to do better next time. So, I think, so again, tying this back, when we had our

first plumbing business that we sold when we went to start our second one, one of the things that we were able to do is we'd already been on that road before. So we could go through and go not doing this again, not doing this again. definitely need to do that again. You know what we need to tweak this that time. So whether you're processing chickens, whether you're running a business, ⁓ know the systems motivate your team. We motivated the chickens. We did with grass with grass. Yes, they were very motivated by fresh grass and we were motivated.

by eating them. Yeah. But we did just smoke the first one this past weekend. That was so good. We one of the bigger ones. I could barely close the egg lid over the top of him. So does that mean we need a bigger egg? No, does not. Yeah, we've we've done it. We've cooked a couple of them. One was one was chicken and dumplings. One was a smoked a smoked chicken, which was really, really good. Yes, we've roasted one in the oven. I did cut one.

I quartered one on processing day. I only did that once because good Lord, that took forever to labor intensive. I can see now why quartered chicken at the grocery store is so much more than a whole bird. Cause it is price per pound different. Now I understand that labor. Yep. So yeah, and now we have a, we've given a couple of a couple away. We traded, we traded labor for chicken on our second processing day.

⁓ yeah. So we, so we had some friends that came over and helped us on the second processing day. And I think at that point we had like 16 chickens left. And, it, man, it went fast. Yes. So we went through those 16 chickens. was like less than three hours. Okay. So if we were to tie that back to business, having, ⁓ partners in the process made the result a lot faster because we could divide and conquer. Right.

I'm not saying that everybody needs a partner in their business, ⁓ but there was, it was so much faster and more efficient on that day because everybody kind of had their thing. Right. Everybody had their station. Yeah. Which again, you you look at McDonald's, mean, that that's been their whole thing is everybody has a station that they pay attention to versus one person cooking a hamburger and doing all the things at one time. Yeah. ⁓

Again, even with an HVAC system, think about like tying that specifically to HVAC, there's sometimes technicians want to install by themselves, but really by having two people do it, it doesn't make it twice as fast. A lot of times it makes it almost four times faster by doing it that way. we learned the same thing with the chicken. Somebody listening to this as an HVAC installer and they're going to send me a nasty message. You don't know.

So in closing, So, what did chickens have to do with running your business? So a lot, actually it does. So there's a lot of tie-ins. you've got to have a plan. Not only do you have to have a plan, you've got to have an end in mind. And I, and I think there's a, there's a lot of businesses that, that miss that part of they have a plan of just doing it, doing it, doing it, and not necessarily of what is the end result going to look like. So you got to have plan. You got to end result.

Then you've got to have systems for each one of these things. So you got to have stages and then inside of each of those stages, you're going to have systems that go inside that stage. That needs to be implemented, monitored and tweaked as needed. Yep. Not just set it and forget it. Systems are not that way. ⁓ I forgetting anything? You got to keep your motions in check. ⁓ that's a good one. Got to keep, keep your motions in check.

If you got to put somebody in the kiln cone, that's just part of the process. Just so you guys know, the kiln cone is the thing you put the chicken in the one bad day station is where you put the chick. It's a figure to speak. And that's what this called as the kiln cone. So I don't want anybody to think I'm saying put your team members in a, in a headlock and a headlock. That's not what I'm saying at all. That's not what I'm saying. So.

All Well, this has been fun. Okay. So real quick, would you do the chicken process again? yes. ⁓ few lessons that I would want to do different one. I would want them further from the house. Yeah. but because they stink and they have flies. Good Lord. They are funky chickens. didn't smell them after a while, but Justin said I was nose blind. So you were nose blind. ⁓ they smelled awful. ⁓ but I would, I would put them, you know, we have, we have a lot of land here. So

They were very close to the house. They would not be that close to the house, but at the same time we would make sure we could get water to them. Yep. Um, would you do that many again? I think so. Okay. Yeah, I think so. I mean, the truth is, is again, this was the, this was the thought process at the beginning, whether you have 10 or whether you have 50, the processing is what takes. That's the, yeah, that's what takes the longest process. mean, when you're moving the thing for that six weeks,

whether you have 10 or 50, it's the same, same process to move them. So, yeah, I think so. Cool. Well, awesome. I hope that was helpful. certainly we had a good time talking about the chicken process and, and that's just been a really fun experience for us. ⁓ farm days, man, living on the farm. Cause again, now are we farmers or we butchers or we both? No, no, don't. Nope. I don't know what we are.

Okay. We don't know what we are, but we live on a farm, I guess, or land, I guess not farm, but anyways, appreciate you guys coming in and hanging out. I hope that was helpful. I hope that gave you a little bit of insight. And if you too are interested in growing your own chickens, I'm going to put the, the land, uh, link inside the show notes. So go check those guys out, man. They're very entertaining. They make great videos and, um, they certainly have helped us in the chicken process. So thank you guys.