Culling our pigs

[Green Aura]

So I wasn't being unfair! Good.

[Odsox]

But £30 for a small chicken - even with my notorious chicken-stretching skills I'd not be able to justify paying that.

Given where this chicken was for sale, I would put it in the same category as a £500.00 handbag ... somebody with more money than sense will buy it.
Prompted by this thread I just worked out roughly what our chicken will be worth (I don't usually bother), or more precisely what they will have cost me. I have 38 chicken this year in three batches, with the first batch due to be slaughtered about now. Looking through the feed invoices and estimating how much more I will have to buy, it looks like they will cost me about €100 in food and that's not organic food. To save you working it out, that comes to €2.63 per bird.
That is just for food, it doesn't include the cost of food for the hens that laid the eggs or the year's supply of food for the cockerel.
It doesn't include the cost of electricity for the incubator or brooder, or the cost of the incubator or brooder for that matter.
It doesn't include the cost of housing or the cost of the run and more importantly it doesn't include any wages or profit for me.

It does however include the peace of mind knowing where my chicken came from, what they were fed on, what quality of life they lived in their 16 week lives and how humanely and quickly they were dispatched, and not least the superior flavour of the meat.
I certainly wouldn't pay £28.50 for a chicken, but if I were unable to produce my own I would most definitely be willing to pay a good deal more than supermarket prices for a locally produced bird reared under the same conditions as my own.