We’re Getting Ready for Pasture-Raised Chickens!

It might feel like winter is never-ending but we can promise you this: spring is just around the corner. In a few short weeks, we’ll be trading snow for sunshine and the VG family farm will be embarking on another great season. There will be cattle on the fields before we know it, and for the fifth year now, our pasture-raised chickens!

Are you ready? We are, and it’s almost time. (We think – we can’t actually control the weather, but we’re very optimistic.)

A customer favourite

If you’ve had our pasture-raised chicken in previous years, you know why it’s so popular with customers. Not only is it a great product, it’s something you can feel good about buying for your family. We raise a White Rock heritage variety of chicken that has been a staple in farming for decades. The chickens are given spacious pens set in lush, green fields on our Simcoe farm. They’re fed a GMO-free diet and enjoy roaming the natural landscape here on the farm. These are happy chickens with a low-stress lifestyle – it doesn’t happen by accident, but it’s well worth the effort.

We designed the chicken’s living space based on the works of animal welfare expert Temple Grandin. Fresh air, clean water, open space and free movement are all key. The chickens have plenty of room to move around while still being protected from predators like foxes and coyotes. Each day, we reposition their large, open-air pens to ensure that they’re on fresh, abundant grass. This has the added benefit of keeping our fields trimmed and fertilized – after all, there’s a lot of eating (and subsequent ‘fertilizing’) happening in the pens.

We’re proud of our chicken

Our pasture-raised chicken is a great achievement in sustainability, ethics and quality food production – all things that the VG Meats team cares deeply about. We’ll continue to innovate and improve upon our system as we learn and grow, and find additional ways to create symbiotic relationships on the farm. The environment is everything to us – it’s where we live, work and produce food that eventually feeds our own families as well as yours. Knowing this, VG is constantly striving to incorporate sustainable practices without compromising ethics or quality. These are our values, and we’ll always stand by them.

If you’ve got questions about our pasture-raised chickens, please let us know! We hope to have this year’s chickens available online and in VG Meats retail stores starting in late May.