Neil Dudley: The Cowboy Perspective, well, it might be hard to define, but I guarantee if you think about it, you’ve got one in mind. Whether you’re building a legacy, an empire, or a fan base, I bet when your friends look at you, they see some cowboy in your face. Y’all come along, let’s talk about this or that. Maybe when we’re done, you’ll go away with another perspective to put under your hat.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Cowboy Perspective for our, well, this will be our second installment of, and I’ve gotten all tied this morning. Anyways, the point is, or what I’m trying to get out is this is our second installment of the Simple Grocer, brands of the Simple Grocer. This little bit of insight we’re trying to provide for those people that shop the Simple Grocer or just are interested in what we perceive and see as some of the most innovative business owners and product makers out there. I hope you really enjoy this conversation with Paul Grieve and Dan Coady with Pasture Bird. Enjoy.
Paul, thank you so much for having us. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Cowboy Perspective, the Simple Grocer episodes or insights into the brands of the Simple Grocer. And this man, for those of you that can’t see us or are just listening on the podcast, we’re in his dining room of his house here in Southern California. We’re going to talk about what I think is the coolest chicken raised on the planet these days, and we’re really happy to be carrying it on the Simple Grocer. So, I’ll let Paul introduce himself a little bit while we get going here. And then we’ll just kind of jump into talking about what Pasture Bird is, what it means to you, how it came about. The floor is yours.
Paul Greive: Thank you, man. Thanks for having us. Thanks for coming down to Southern California. Welcome. Welcome to our home down here. Yeah, I mean, Pasture Bird was an accident, that was the bottom line. We never meant to get into this. I grew up in downtown Seattle, never had any thoughts or plans on getting into farming or agriculture. Honestly, I just never thought about it. I mean, I grew up eating fast food like everybody else, and never really thought about food much at all. It wasn’t until my time in the military where I started getting some pretty bad health problems, started getting arthritis and started really like cramping up and get a lot of brain fog and bad sleep. At 22 years old, it really didn’t seem like it was right. I started taking a lot of vitamin M, which is Motrin in the Marine Corps. Something was wrong, man. And a couple of buddies back then and said, hey, you should think about this CrossFit thing, and look at this paleo; it’s all kind of starting to happen in 2007 timeframe. And my world sort of got flipped upside down, man, started eating better, feeling better, and finally connected the fact that what you put into your body actually affects the way you feel and perform. And for me, that was a completely new concept I’d never thought about before.
Neil Dudley: Wow. Well, thanks for your service. That’s kind of special to me, too. I love that we can, just by happenstance really, be supporting a protein brand and company, but also, it’s being ran by ex-military. So that’s just like icing on the cake if you ask me.
Paul Greive: Totally. Well, there’s a lot of us that get out and it’s a lot of the same skills that you pick up in the military, what makes you good in the military, that dedication, that just you’re going to get it done no matter what, operating on limited resources. I encourage a lot of vets to get into farming. I think it’s a great follow-up career for these guys.
Neil Dudley: Okay, so I don’t even know everything there is to know about Pasture Bird. That’s why we want to have this conversation, because I think the consumers that are shopping the Simple Grocer, Pasture Bird anywhere and everywhere, that might be fine. What’s been really fun on the trip out here is pretty much every restaurant we go to is serving Pasture Bird. It’s been really cool. We’ve got to partake in a lot of your quality products. What sets you apart? Let’s just kind of paint the picture. We did talk to Dan out at one of the farms, so we’ll splice that conversation together with this one, and I think it will be a really robust insight into Pasture Bird and why somebody should spend- I always love to say it like this, one of the questions I always ask on the Cowboy Perspective is what’s the value of a dollar – what is the value of a dollar to you? And the reason I ask that is people are spending their dollars on products that I’m supporting, backing, making, and I want to understand, or I at least want them to understand that that dollar of theirs means something to me, it’s important. So, what sets you apart? Just tell us what makes Pasture Bird healthier, better for somebody.
Paul Greive: I always start this conversation with we can’t really explain how Pasture Bird is different until what’s normal, that whole idea. So, when we really talk about this, we always have to set a baseline. 99.999% of the broilers, which is meat chickens produced in the US, are in stationary barns. And I’m not saying there’s necessarily something wrong with that, but that is what makes us different is we don’t operate in a stationary barn model. So typically, conventional industrial is 30-40,000 birds inside of a 600-foot by 50-foot barn. They’re in there. People like to say, it’s factory farming, it’s horrible, all this stuff. I don’t know – it can be done well, it can be done poorly. Just like pasture can. But inside of this kind of stationary barn, the animals are in there, they’re pooping in the same place that they live, and that starts to cause some issues. But all you have to do to make that same product free range chicken is you just open up a couple of pop doors at either end of the house, give them access to the outdoors, and now you have free range. Most people that are eating free range or buying free range or thinking animals are living outside, they’re foraging, they’re pecking and scratching and doing all this different stuff, and it’s just not the reality at the end of the day. Those birds are living most their life indoors. And so, when we got into Pasture Bird, we started really looking at this.
Neil Dudley: And those are probably concrete floors in there.
Paul Greive: Oh yeah, for sure. When we started really getting excited about this, we found out there was a guy in Virginia named Joel Salatin. Joel was doing this revolutionary way of moving animals across pasture, and he was using these floorless coops. So, the birds were living on grass 24/7/365. They could forage, they could peck and scratch, they could eat bugs and worms, grasses, seeds. They were never on their own manure because it was moving them every single day to a new spot. And to me, I had a good career. I was an accountant, I was living at the beach, I was in Newport, everything was great – definitely did not get into this for the money or something or for some glamorous lifestyle. But the fact that environmentalism played such a key role for me, the idea that you can actually make soil healthier, produce, forage, sequester or carve, and do all this cool stuff by running animals a certain way, I was like, okay, that’s interesting. So, we got our first 50 chicks, put them inside of this little Joel Salatin coop, started pulling them around the field, and we always say, we didn’t do antibiotics because I wouldn’t have ever known what antibiotics to give them. I mean, I didn’t know any, we didn’t know anything about livestock or animals or any of that stuff. And raised the first 50 birds, kind of asked friends and family if they’d be interested in buying some. All 50 sold out when the birds were only about that big, two weeks old. And then we harvested them with an iPad here and a kill cone here. Doing this – saying backup now, you’ve got to come in here. Just completely figured it out as we went. And now it’s grown. So, what really makes us different is the pasture raised. Pasture raised to me, means the birds are raised on pasture, not raised inside of a barn or not raised inside of- a concrete floor or bedding or any of that stuff. Like they’re on fresh pasture every day, and they’re going be moved every day to a new spot. That gives them the flavor. It gets them all that extra exercise. It’s really what makes Pasture Bird special is where they live – outside on the grass.
Neil Dudley: Along with that, or in conjunction with that, let’s talk about their feed a bit, or are you giving them antibiotics when they need it, if they need it, sub therapeutically, any of those things? Let’s talk about that a little bit so people can understand.
Paul Greive: So, on the feed side, we’ve done it all. So, we’ve done everything from the heritage breed, certified organic, soy-free, ultra, I guess what people would say is premium, down to the white bird that’s on just a local, it’s a great feed; it’s locally milled, but it’s a conventional feed. It’s not certified organic or any of that stuff. And across this whole span, what we found was when we’re doing this ultra 18-week-old heritage certified organic, nobody could afford it, man. And we were producing food for rich people, and we had all these middle-income folks saying I’d love to buy pasture raised chicken, but I can’t afford to pay $60 for a whole chicken or something like that. And so, we rolled out this white bird that eats beautifully. The chefs absolutely love it. And it’s on a locally milled, no drugs and antibiotics, conventional feed.
Neil Dudley: So, no sub-therapeutic antibiotics. They are just eating their feed, picking up-
Paul Greive: Never an antibiotic. And you asked about when animals get sick. So, we’re not opposed to antibiotics in any way. But in a million and a half birds, we just haven’t needed any yet. I think – I’m knocking on wood always – but I’m also thinking that’s got something to do with the moving all the time and not being on their manure. You’ll get a sick bird here and there. And you are going to have that with a million and a half people too. But we never had a sick flock yet. And I’m not saying we never would. We would treat them, if it came down to that, but they wouldn’t sell as part of the Pasture Bird product.
Neil Dudley: Well, that was part of the interesting thing I found meeting Dan and taking a look at the farm was the access you allowed. It was just like, come on in; let’s check it out, see anything you want to see. A lot of places aren’t nearly like that. And especially in pig farming, they have to be a bit more careful. I guess, chickens don’t have to worry about picking up diseases from us or that kind of thing as much.
Paul Greive: Oh, they do, man.
Neil Dudley: They do? Let’s talk about that a little bit.
Paul Greive: If you go to a big farm, biosecurity is God. Like that’s first, and then everything else falls in behind that.
Neil Dudley: Do you think it’s biosecurity or we just don’t want the people coming in here and posting all over that we’re bad?
Paul Greive: It’s a good excuse not to have to people on your farm too, trust me.
Neil Dudley: I agree. I think that’s a lot of the reason you hide a lot of this, I want to say, couldn’t we all just be at the table and have a conversation, and yes, they don’t agree with me. That’s fine.
Paul Greive: That’s the beauty of it, actually.
Neil Dudley: I don’t agree with them. It doesn’t mean I hate them. So anyways, why you’re always trying to put somebody else under, I think that’s just a sad part of humanity.
Paul Greive: Biosecurity to us is, when we started, we were farming in barefoot, walking around like hippies in the field. And so, I would say we haven’t learned everything there is to know about large-scale farming, and probably biosecurity is one of those ones we should take more seriously than we probably do. We rely a little bit too though, when the animal is outside and you’re not propping it up with antibiotics or drugs or ionophores or any of the sub therapeutic, anything, there’s no synthetic chemicals go into the product, they have a healthier immune system. So, it’s like a kid that doesn’t have a bunch of drugs and sicknesses going into them. They can walk outside, they can go to school, and they’re not going to get sick quite as easily. And if they do get sick, their immuno-system fights it off and they’ll get better. So, if I have a chicken that’s got a little runny nose, I can come back, and three days later, it’s fine because it’s healthy. That’s a big difference of what we’re doing and what kind of what the industry’s gotten itself into a little bit.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, certainly a differentiator. Okay, and the feed, is there any bone meal or animal byproducts in the feed?
Paul Greive: No, we use a vegetarian feed. And I always say, it’s kind of a consumer thing though, because chickens are actually not vegetarians – chickens are omnivores. I don’t have a problem with folks necessarily using that stuff if you know where it’s being sourced from and where it’s coming from, but we’ve just decided to take it all out because I can’t trace exactly whose bones those are, that are going into it.
Neil Dudley: It’s so hard to say. But with them being on pasture, it might be hard to say all vegetarian diet because there’s a chance they’ve got some bugs-
Paul Greive: My goal is for them to go get that bug. I would like to say, I hope to God, my chickens aren’t vegetarians. Chickens are not vegetarians. They never were. And they never were meant to be. The feed, the supplemental feed we give them is vegetables. But I’m hoping they get a bunch of bugs and worms. I’ve seen them chasing mice in there, lizards, spiders, moths. We had a huge moth invasion fly through Southern California a few months ago. And I mean, these guys were just going nuts. They were loving life, man.
Neil Dudley: That’s a delicacy. Well, I thought it was really cool just seeing the grasses that the coops were being made on. And the other piece is where you’re raising them has shade. I think people will at times mistake any kind of shaded structure as, ah, they are cooping them in, they are barned up. So, you almost just have to see it to understand it. You have to hear somebody talking about this. Yeah, they’re in moveable barns, they’re on ground grown grass, weeds. I was like, man, these are weeds. Yeah, they love them; they’re just chowin’ down.
Paul Greive: And that’s our story too. So, like when we started, we started raising them in these coops. I said, man, I think Instagram would like this better if we just open these up, just let the birds run all over the whole farm. And we did that, and it was cool for Instagram, but for real life and for production, it was horrible. Because the birds, every single day, all 5,000, would walk under the same tree. They’d poop in the same spot. They would never eat any fresh forages. And they’d just sit there all day long and they would never leave. And it didn’t really work.
Neil Dudley: We got to scream that story from the rooftop.
Paul Greive: Yes, totally.
Neil Dudley: Just this idea, this picture in everybody’s head that chickens are just all out here pecking around all day long, it’s not true. The sun comes out, the heat comes up, and they go for the shade. And this is actually so much nicer for them to not have to be on top of each other under the one tree, standing in their own poop. So that’s really, I never heard it put that way before, but that makes so much sense to me.
Paul Greive: Well, we tried it. I mean, in theory you think all of these birds- if you’ve never raised chickens or any livestock before you think, oh, they don’t want to be in this thing. They want to go all over the whole farm. And they actually don’t at all. They’re descendants of the junglefowl. The junglefowl, if you ever been to Hawaii or Thailand and have seen the wild chickens, they’re kind of out in the morning hours, foraging and doing their thing, and then as soon as the sun really comes up, they’re under a bush or they’re staying put. They want to be in the shade. They want to be close to food and close to their water. And so, we want to give them that environment, but then also combine that with the best of fresh pasture every day. So, our whole thing is animal welfare, and they like to be in the shade and stay cool and be able to have food and water and all that stuff, but have the pasture, too.
Neil Dudley: And I think you have a really cool regenerative effect on the land, that is so valuable, too.
Paul Greive: Well, that’s what we’re going for, and hopefully you saw that. I would love to take you to the ranch where we’ve been there for four or five years now, to see the development. So, when we got to that farm that you guys were on, it was a potato farm. And I don’t know if you know, potatoes are one of the toughest crops on soil. I mean, they’re fumigating-
Neil Dudley: You almost can’t get enough ingredients or a fertilizer back in the ground to heal the ground. They are like peanuts.
Paul Greive: Peanuts are like that too. You can only grow one crop every three years because you just pull all the nutrition out of the soil. And we got out there and I remember taking my first step onto the ground and my boot probably sank 12 inches into this, I mean it wasn’t soil, it was dust. Sank right down, I’m like, oh, I’ve never been on something like this before.
Neil Dudley: What I think is so cool about your story, too, is like you just had a blank slate to get into the business. It was like me, anything I do in agriculture is going to be a bit, I don’t want to say tainted, but I’m going to have an initial thought about almost all of it because I was just born into it. I was kind of just always living on the land, working with animals, saw cowboys and my dad and my family working this way and that way. So, I always am like just almost prejudice in some way towards it.
Paul Greive: I say one of our biggest advantages is that we’re first-generation, because I’ve seen it, man. I’ve got a good buddy who is sixth generation and a Stanford guy, a very bright guy, but he goes, “I can’t finish animals on pasture because my dad didn’t do it that way and my grandpa didn’t.” It’s kind of a socially, it’s almost like switching religions on him, man. It’s to that level where there’s a lot of social pressure to do things the same way, because I don’t want to insult granddad. It’s very tough for them, and I have nothing like that. I can do anything I want, and I’m not pissing off anybody. And for me, I feel blessed. I didn’t have a land base. We didn’t have any money to start. So those are the two downsides, but I’m free to do whatever I want, and I take it as a blessing.
Neil Dudley: Well, I think anybody that’s ever ate a Pasture Bird chicken is appreciative of that, as somebody who’s had several of them since I’ve been out here. And we were testing them to go in the store, and just really quality made. I think everybody, they want that great experience when they’re eating a meal with even just for health reasons, or if you’re entertaining some friends, isn’t it nice to put out a real quality meal? This Neil, he puts out some good food. We ought to come over here next time. Let’s don’t quit coming; we’re going to stay his friend just for the food.
Paul Greive: I have this thing though – it’s like Pasture Bird is actually not special at all. And nature’s really what’s special. So, when you enjoy that Pasture Bird chicken, it’s not like I did something great. I just tried to copy nature. And I hope what you’re picking up and what you’re really enjoying is, I mean, that’s nature. We’re just respecting that, and that’s what you’re taking and that’s what you’re really enjoying. And we always say, this is pasture raised, regenerative, rotational grazing, antibiotic – you could put all these million labels on it, grandma would’ve called it chicken. There’s nothing special. All we’re doing is maybe bringing it back a hundred years, and you are just tasting the old school way that it used to be done. So yeah, I like to say, we’re not the reason Pasture Bird is great. We’re listening to the way that nature kind of designed things, and when you respect that, I think you get a great product.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Jump into that story about how did the company get started?
Paul Greive: Yeah, so like I said, it was an accidental farm. We were sitting around, 2012, we all kind of had this health journey that started to happen now-
Neil Dudley: You saw we’re all – who is that?
Paul Greive: Okay. So, my family is big; I married into this hot mess, is what I always say. My wife’s got four brothers and sisters. I started the company with her father-in-law, her two brothers- or her father – my father-in-law – and her two brothers, which are my brothers-in-law. But we didn’t mean to start a company. We were just sitting around 2012, Easter, joking around. They had about a quarter acre of just backyard area. I said, “Man, that’d be kind of funny to have some chickens back there, just running around, and we could try to do it and do it just for our family,” or whatever. And we’re just joking. And my brother, Rob, he disappears from the room, comes back like 10 minutes later, and he goes, “Oh hey, you guys, I just ordered 50 chicks and they’re going to be here in two weeks.” And we’re all like, no, you’re kidding. We’ve never raised a dog, man. Like, what are you talking about, 50 chicks? Where are we going to start them? Where are you going to do all this? We don’t have a coop; we don’t have anything. And it was actually a blast though. Got those first 50. We didn’t know anything, just put them outside and they did great. We didn’t need any of the drugs or any of that stuff. And just, they grew so perfectly. And I think, again, if my dad would have grown up in poultry, he would have said no way, you can’t do that. You got to have the barn, and you’ve got to have the this and that. And you’ve got to get them started on this vaccine, antibiotic protocol. I wouldn’t have known. I mean, that actually made it easier for us.
Neil Dudley: That’s such a beautiful piece of the story, it really is.
Paul Greive: But we need both. I don’t want to make it sound like the new school is just going to come up and fix agriculture or something. I don’t know shit. We need people that have been in it for a while now. So now that we’ve kind of gotten our start, now we look more to the industry to help us, guide us. Because we got a certain way we want to do things, but the industry’s figured out a lot already. We’ve got a lot of respect for the industry and how things are done at large scale, but we’ve got our own little spin we’d like to do on it. So, we started out renegades, we hate big ag, we hate everything that has to do with agriculture. Now it’s a little more tempered. I respect some of the things they do. There’s room for improvement on some things, too. And then everybody would agree with that.
Neil Dudley: Well, everybody’s a strong word because some people- What I think is so important is having that open mind to it. Alright. So, let’s talk about some of the kind of specifics of the products. How do you thaw Pasture Bird? What’s the best way to prepare it? What’s the shelf life? Or just those kinds of things like, hey, when somebody buys a chicken on the Simple Grocer and gets it frozen at home, what should they do with it?
Paul Greive: Yeah, one of the cool things about working with you guys is that the industry has kind of demonized freezing meat, because in my business, in the wholesale restaurant business, you’ll try to sell it fresh until there’s two days left of shelf life, and then you’ll freeze it because you be, oh crap, I couldn’t sell it. With you guys, we know that you want it frozen. So, from the time it’s harvested, it’s frozen instantly. So you got a lot of shelf life on the product. With pasture-raised meats, they’re going to grow a little slower. And because of that, they’re going to get that more flavor. But they can also be a little bit tougher sometimes. So, we’re huge proponents of the brine. We love to take that frozen bird, just take it out of the package, and drop it right into a saltwater brine. That’s like maybe one part salt per 50 parts of water or something like that, just a little bit.
Neil Dudley: Solid frozen, drop it in?
Paul Greive: Yeah, right in the brine. And you could leave that in a fridge for one to three days, no problem. From the time you thaw it out till the time you need to eat it is probably about six, seven days. So, you got a lot of time because it was flash frozen right after harvesting. I love the brine. I think it just tenderizes it a little bit, loosens it up. Some people add like brown sugar in there, different herbs or spices. I’m just salt and water for me. Good water though. Try to get yourself some good water when you do the brine, otherwise it’s soaking up the chlorine and all the junk. Yeah, so try to get some good spring water or something like that when you do the brine. That’s my favorite way to do it.
Neil Dudley: Perfect. I think that’s a good just education. I learned a lot. Like being a part of the Simple Grocer and playing this role, we carry some fish and that’s interesting. You don’t want to thaw fish inside the plastic. So, there’s a lot of stuff to learn, and I think this is a chance for the consumers to hear really the best way or just to be confident that, the way I’m handling this food is really good. You mentioned shelf life. So, part of what Peterson’s does is we don’t change our production line to sell on the Simple Grocer. So, the stuff that we’re dating and sending to retail is going in the freezer too, so it has this date, and it says used by/freeze by. Matter of fact, you ordered the box, we’ll check out some of that. What we find is we’ve got to educate customers a little better to understand that use by/freeze by, it’s not bad. Let’s say you get something with a May date on it – it’s still good. It’s just not worth changing the production line up to put some kind of Julian date, which people don’t understand all these Julian dates are telling them what day that was packed on and everything. People have to have traceability to run it back through if there was some need for a recall, or just to be under USDA inspection, you’ve got to be able to trace your products.
Paul Greive: Well, it’s this online e-commerce world, that we’re all, it’s a tiny niche of our businesses right now, and we want it to grow and we think it will, but yeah, nobody’s pulling product off the normal line to process these little parts. So, yeah, it’s a little different. I know it’s not technically correct, but I always say do the smell test in addition to everything too. With chicken especially, if it doesn’t smell good, it should be tossed. I don’t care if it’s 4 days or 14 days or 24 days, if you pull it out and it’s not smelling good, don’t eat it.
Neil Dudley: And you can eat something past the date if it smells good. It’s like do the smell test – milk, it is good for everything. My wife’s family were huge dairymen in Texas and Eastern New Mexico. Her mom still today will have milk in there forever. I was really, really a stickler, like if it was within five days, I thought it was bad. She’ll drink it like 20 days past. She just smells it, like oh, that’s good. But it’s just how you were raised, your experience. Why I ever picked up that five days before the shelf life, it was bad, I had no reason for me to feel that way, but it just got into my mind. It’s like the waitress came last night. She’s a vegetarian. We were talking about we sell meat, and we think meat’s healthy for her. And she goes well, there are a lot of studies that vegetarian diet’s so much healthier and you’ll live longer. I didn’t get into it with her. I kind of had this knee jerk, like man, I’m mad at her, which after a little while I was like, there’s no good reason to be that way. Humans are going to believe what they want to believe. They’re going to, if they- Let’s say she thinks vegetarianism is better for her, she’s going to find the study that tells her that, she’s going to find the friends that tell her that, and she’s going to feel better because-
Paul Greive: Human nature.
Neil Dudley: And I’m the same way. I could be vegan, vegetarian and feel great, but I don’t even want to try because I think I feel great when I’m eating meat. So yeah, I think everybody’s very much the same and those conversations I would enjoy, I think the Simple Grocer should play a role in, and just saying, similar to politics, it’s not your side, my side, it is we’re all on this earth, planet spinning around together. Let’s figure out how we can get along. I can learn from you, doesn’t mean I have to be you and-
Paul Greive: Well, what you’ll actually see, I think, because I’ve had experience with this myself, is I estimate between 20 to 30% of our customer base, well, they’re not vegan/vegetarian, but there’s at least one in the house, because that’s a similar customer base. It’s the people that are concerned with the environment, animal welfare, they’re trying to do something different, step out of the norm. And so, I always say like vegan/vegetarian movement is my friend. Unless they’re hyper militant and they want to kill me because I raised animals, well, that’s going to be tough.
Neil Dudley: Those are the almost impossible ones to even talk to.
Paul Greive: But honestly, that’s 0.1% of them. Most of them mean well, they’re trying to do right by animals and by the environment, and as long as you’re in that camp, I’m in the same camp with you. So, I’m engaging, I like it, I think it’s great. Even the stuff, the Beyond Meat and fake meat, lab meat, and all that, I say, honestly, it’s good for us because that means, the consumer demand is shifting away from the sort of conventional factory farming, and they want something different. And I consider what we do alternative meat. It’s not the normal stuff. So as long as that’s growing, I think our business is growing, and I’m okay with it.
Neil Dudley: And there’s always, there’s still so much to learn. I think the petri dish meat, we don’t even know what that’s- nobody’s consumed it long enough to know anything about it really.
Paul Greive: I know. Let me take the back. I’m scared of what’s going on in there. I’m just saying the idea that the movement is growing means our movement’s growing. I don’t want to eat lab grown meat myself; I’ll pass on that one.
Neil Dudley: Mr. Grieve, here’s the rapid-fire questions section of this interview. What’s your breakfast routine?
Paul Greive: We got three little ones, and we do a pretty hardy breakfast over here. Yeah, we do the big egg thing. There’s always a pound or two of meat that goes in there. My thing now though, we started doing this CSA box, with the vegetables. So once all the goodness is cooked, chop up a bunch of those greens and just toss them in there and kind of burn them down too. And just throw it all in one pot, kind of one pan thing.
Neil Dudley: So kind of like a scramble, a breakfast scramble?
Paul Greive: A big ol’ scramble, yeah. I’ll try to get some green stuff going on in there, too.
Neil Dudley: Good. Cool. Do your kids eat it?
Paul Greive: They do. My kids are great eaters, man.
Neil Dudley: Well, you trained them well.
Paul Greive: Yeah, it’s that or go hungry.
Neil Dudley: Okay. What’s your favorite product to use or recipe or meal?
Paul Greive: I’m a whole bird guy, man. I love the whole bird. Personally, I love to spatchcock it. So, you’d basically just take out the backbone and then it grills up real nice. We’re here in Southern California where grilling season lasts 12 months. So yeah, we love to just do the whole bird spatchcock. We do our whole family, 25 people, it’s going to be four or five birds on the grill probably, but it just makes it cook evenly and it looks cool, and it’s nice.
Neil Dudley: Alright, spatchcock chicken. Coffee or tea?
Paul Greive: Coffee all day.
Neil Dudley: Sweet or savory?
Paul Greive: Savory.
Neil Dudley: What’s your holiday food traditions? You have any of those?
Paul Greive: Yeah, well, we’re a pretty normal American family, I guess. Probably do a chicken and a ham at Thanksgiving- I’m sorry, a turkey and ham at Thanksgiving, probably something like that around the Christmas time and nothing too far out. We have sort of done a whole lamb for Easter, that has been kind of fun, put up on a spit and kind of do it the Argentine style. But for the most part, probably whatever normal American traditions are.
Neil Dudley: What is, I don’t know, I kind of want to ask you something about the military, but I can’t think of what would be a good question. So, you were in the Marines.
Paul Greive: Marine Corps, yeah.
Neil Dudley: And so how long was that part of your life?
Paul Greive: Four years. So just fresh out of college, I was 22, college athlete, young and studied accounting. And I said, man, there’s just no way I can sit in a cubicle for the next 10 years of my life, and I want to do something different. And I always wanted to serve in some way. I thought maybe I could be a missionary or do Peace Corps, something where you’re traveling and doing some adventure. And just three guys, man, in the course of maybe four days, three guys, I really respect came and said, “You know what, you should think about doing them the military after college.” And to first guy, I said no way. The second guy, I said that’s weird, because I was like two days ago, somebody else said the same thing.
Neil Dudley: I actually kind of think that was a God thing a little bit.
Paul Greive: It was a God thing all the way, man. On the third guy, I said, alright, there’s no denying it. I’ve read the Bible enough. I know three is something. And so, I signed up. And I had the time of my life, man. I got to do intelligence officer. I got to learn sniper command. And then I got to go to Iraq and spend six months living with 40 Iraqi officers and spent breakfast, lunch, and dinner with those guys and patrolling and do missions and smoking hookah and watching soccer. I was an Iraqi for six months. It was a blast, man.
Neil Dudley: Were you in war zones?
Paul Greive: I was in a war zone, but by 2009, it was pretty calmed down. So, you had stuff like IEDs or folks shooting rockets but from a long way away, but there was nobody running out in the street trying to shoot at you anymore. So, it was a lot more training the Iraqis to operate without us once we’re going to leave.
Neil Dudley: So, since this is going to be on the Cowboy Perspective, you get the two standard kind of questions. First one is what is the value of a dollar or a Bitcoin to you?
Paul Greive: Ooo, nice. The dollar is more powerful than the vote. So, we’re talking about wanting to change the food system, or if you’ve got a different future that you want to see for agriculture, I like to say, and it’s Joel, Salatin, it’s not salvation by legislation. If you want to see a different future, you’ve got to vote with your dollar. And to me, the big companies and everybody else will respond when they start to see dollars shifting in a different direction.
Neil Dudley: Oh man, I’ve lived that, that is such a great perspective. Early on in the life of Peterson’s, we just were so under the radar, we’re just doing this little thing that’s percolating. Now every competitor that we’ve had since 20 years ago is owned by a big conglomerate. So those dollars started speaking loud enough that the big companies came calling. And what I’m enjoying is this piece of, hey, let’s get back to the guys that are under the radar or percolating. It’s so much fun. That’s the really great part about the Simple Grocer.
Paul Greive: Well, you use your dollar to support what you want to see. And like we always say we could do the most amazing, pasture raised regenerative, beautiful farming, but if nobody supports it, we’re done. I don’t care how awesome it is, if people don’t give us their dollars, I’m going back to being an accountant or something like that.
Neil Dudley: Well, I think the dollar is the most influential vote you can employ.
Paul Greive: I completely agree.
Neil Dudley: Okay, next question is, what’s your favorite book, most gifted book, favorite podcast? What are you consuming in your life to grow?
Paul Greive: For book, I’d have to do a couple of them because I’d be remised to say it’s not for me, my faith is the Bible. I think the Bible tells that regeneration story, restoration story, that we focus on for the soil, the same thing can happen in your heart. That whole thing, kind of sounds corny, but it is what drives so much that we do. Second to that, I’m a big fan of Good to Great. I don’t know if you’ve read Good to Great.
Neil Dudley: I’m familiar with it. I’ve picked up the print version and probably read the first few pages. I need to get it on audible and listen to the whole thing.
Paul Greive: Yeah, do the audio one, man. It’s about building a team and getting, not so much hiring for positions, but getting great people. And once you have great people, then you find a spot for them on the bus. And to me, that’s huge because business is just people, that’s all it really is. And yeah, that’s been influential to me. Podcasts and stuff like that, I’ve lately been real into this guy, David Goggins. You follow him at all? I’m a big Goggins fan, man.
Neil Dudley: Can’t Hurt Me woke me up to a whole new perspective of things. And even gave me a different perspective on what is it when we’re treating people different because their skin color or something.
Paul Greive: Racist, I guess.
Neil Dudley: Racism, yes, that’s the word I’m trying to come up with. It gave me a whole new perspective on that. Me and my dad even talked about this on one episode of the podcast is how we’re white men in America and we just don’t have any way to really know what it’s like to be a Black man in America. So, I have to try- I’m racist in a way, just because I can’t live a different life. I can’t understand that completely. That that book was so-
Paul Greive: That rocked me pretty good. And yeah, you can find his interviews on like Joe Rogan or some of the other ones, too, the podcasts.
Neil Dudley: His audible book was really cool. Did you listen to it? because he kind of podcasted in the middle of reading of the book. It was awesome. Have you done Fearless, the Adam Brown story?
Paul Greive: I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t done it yet.
Neil Dudley: I’d listen to that right after Goggins. It’s really cool.
Paul Greive: And it’s just that idea of like figure out where you want to get in life and figure out the steps to get there. I think it sounds simple, but there’s so much to that. And my thing is not ultimate physical fitness like his, but how do I apply that same discipline, determination to my vertical, which is being the best dad that I can be or being the best farmer that I can be and stuff like that. I just love the guy’s perspective on things.
Neil Dudley: To me, he fought, he just was in such a pressure cooker of life that that perspective has to be valuable. You have to listen to that, and you have to think, man, I haven’t had to go through any of that. And I really don’t want to, so maybe I can just learn from what-
Paul Greive: -can pick up 5% of it.
Neil Dudley: There is no finish line.
Paul Greive: That’s right, absolutely.
Neil Dudley: I’m going to this finish line of retirement. Well, that’s a bullshit thing to even be going after.
Paul Greive: Totally.
Neil Dudley: So anyways, cool. I really agree. Paul, man, thanks for having us to your home. Thanks for showing us your company, being a part of this thing we’re trying to do with the Simple Grocer, and hopefully we get together and have a lot more fun conversations like this. As we grow as our customer base grows, as they get more informed, I’m sure there’s going to be more stuff we can tell them about.
Paul Greive: Also an honor to be able to be part of what you guys do. I’ve got a ton of respect for you guys and your company. You could have picked any chicken company in the world that you wanted to be on your platform, and you picked us. So we really appreciate it.
Neil Dudley: Well, that’s a lie because we can’t pick any; we’re after the special ones – you guys are special. Alright, thanks for listening everybody. I hope you’ve really found some value in this conversation. If you didn’t write in, because I want to know what it is you’re looking for, and we want to provide that. Hasta luego.
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Alright, let’s transition out to the farm with Dan Coady. I hope you really enjoyed the insights Paul provided. I look forward to hearing what you guys think about everything and for you to get to hear a little bit about Dan and his story and how he got involved with Pasture Bird. I hope you stay tuned, keep listening, and let me know what you think about this podcast. Here it comes, Dan Coady.
Okay, cool. So, like those birds aren’t going to run out of there now that you opened the door?
Dan Coady: No, not at all.
Neil Dudley: Okay so it’s pasture raised, but that looks like they’re in a barn or they’re in- so talk about that a little bit. What is that, and why are we calling it pastured and not coop raised or what-? I don’t know enough about it. So, this is really educational for me. I know I’ve been raised, or I know quite a bit about the cattle and the pork industry, but not so much the poultry. And so, talk a little bit about that. Somebody that sees this might think, well, that’s bullshit, they’re in a barn.
Dan Coady: Well, I think that they’re in a barn cause that’s where they’d want to be. So, these are junglefowl. These aren’t Savannah birds that want to be out in the open uncovered. So, they’re always going to seek out shade. So, you asked me, are they going to run out? Well, if they ran out, they’d run out into the sun. And if they ran out, they’d be running away from their feed. If they ran out, they’d be away from their water. And I could take no walls on this whole structure, and I could contain them with shade, feed, and water. That’s what they really want. And these birds are a commercial broiler. Like I was saying before, they have an ability to convert feed and create a desired carcass in a short amount of time. I can take a newly hatched chick and raise it out to be a full grown, not fully mature, but a full-sized meat bird in about six weeks, actually a shave under. And so, those birds do not have the same real desire to go out and peck like you see like a wild bird, but a wild bird you’d never be able to finish in six weeks. And so, there is a definitely a push in the community to go to slower growing birds. And I think that’s fantastic, because like I said, I’m a dark meat guy. So, you go to slower growing birds, you generally get a lot more leg meat and you get smaller breast meat. And so, as the industry, or the really the market is evolving, well, we can grow whatever bird people want, but at the end of the day, the birds like to be on grass. The manure needs to get assimilated into the ground to grow more and better grass. And so, it’s really self-fulfilling, because this was a farmed out old potato field here. So, in the course of about 16 months, we’re now installing green pasture of high-quality forage.
Neil Dudley: Now, are you seeding this in any way? Or are you sprigging this in any way?
Dan Coady: We seeded it. And then we’ll probably overseed one last time this winter with a perennial rye and clover mix. And actually, we should be good to go at that point.
Neil Dudley: Like this right here, what is this plant at my feet? To me, it looks like a weed. Is that good?
Dan Coady: It is a weed.
Neil Dudley: Do they eat that though?
Dan Coady: They do, I can show you there. They’ll tear it up. And I’m not familiar with that exact one. It’s similar to the amalgams that we’ve got, but like I said, I’m from Texas and California shrubs aren’t mine.
Neil Dudley: I think the idea that that’s a weed, but it’s still great feed for those birds, they enjoy it, all protein, let’s say animal protein is really a way to farm grass and turn it into something more valuable in my mind. So, everybody that pays attention to that, understands that, tries to do it in the most sustainable regenerative way, to me is just really exciting, a lot of fun, and I appreciate that effort. So, let’s take a look at the birds a little bit and maybe get some video of them. We know now the breed. You talked about feed, and what kind of ration are you guys using or what kind of something besides just the pasture are they getting access to?
Dan Coady: Yeah, they should be getting about 80-85% of their diet from a feed ration that is a basically cereal grains. So, you’ve got your corn, you’ve got your oats, your soy. You’ve got mineral mix, usually a little bit of alfalfa. There’s various components that you can put into whatever feed ration that you want, and we will tailor it to the season and really the temperature because as-
Neil Dudley: Now are you the brainchild behind those rations and make- A lot of people I see are kind of hiring nutritionists, animal nutritionists, to understand and know exactly how that’s converting and all that. I’ve got a good feeling you know a lot about that.
Dan Coady: I know enough to talk with people that are knowledgeable and go with what I want, not necessarily what I’m offered. But at the end of the day, I work with real good nutritionists and value their opinion and generally go with their inputs.
Neil Dudley: Perfect. Have you seen or been around commercial poultry operations and-?
Dan Coady: Have I? Yes, sir.
Neil Dudley: I’ve never been to a commercial one so I don’t know what the difference is really like. Is it bigger barns with more chickens per square foot?
Dan Coady: I cross threaded it – that’s what that problem is.
Neil Dudley: You never do get to walk into any one of these without something to work on, do you?
Dan Coady: It’s always the wire. So, this is actually a dirty. So, this is as dirty as the house ever will get.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Cause it’s just about to move.
Dan Coady: Yes, sir. So, she’s been on this patch for about 24 hours, maybe a hair under. And it’ll be moved in probably the next half hour, 45 minutes.
Neil Dudley: Yep. Cool. Talk to me a little bit – I see one little chick there and then some bigger ones. Are these all hatches? I mean, are you kind of following these are all like hatched at the same time, is it a couple of different-?
Dan Coady: No, I can get it there. So that should be called.
Neil Dudley: That’s just a slow growing-?
Dan Coady: They basically, if you don’t get the bird’s appetite stimulated within the first 72 to 96 hours, it’ll never really achieve a market weight in a normal amount of time. So, if you take a bird that is not a Cornish Cross, or slow growing birds, it might be 8, 10, 20 weeks to finish a bird. And so, if you’ve got a production cycle that requires you to house birds on pasture for every week of production that you’re going to be selling, we sell every single week, 52 weeks a year. So that means, if I’m raising them for four weeks on pasture, that means I need to have at least five full sets of houses to accommodate all those birds. Well, if I wanted to do that to 20 weeks, that’s a lot more housing. That’s a lot more time on pasture and a lot more labor to [exhaust/enjoy 47:57].
Neil Dudley: Okay. That’s the one that didn’t start eating quick enough and-
Dan Coady: Well, so we used to brood here on the property. However, we’re trying to grow. And brooding is the type of thing that’s really done best in a controlled environment. And so, we used a contract brooder for the first 19 days, and they did a fantastic job at the beginning, but now I’m starting to get a lot more of that.
Neil Dudley: What is brooding? I don’t understand that.
Dan Coady: Brooding is basically, you’ve heard of a brooding hen or a brooding mother or a brood cow. And so basically what that is, is the mothering, the nurturing, the rearing of a newly hatched chick. So, when that egg first pips out, it can’t handle the world. It can’t handle the temperatures, it can’t handle the cold, the heat, the wet. So, the mother hen keeps it safe in her nest. Then she begins to feed and feeding that bird. Well over the next 21 days, that bird is going to learn to thermoregulate. Its plumage is all going to come out. It’s going to understand where its food and water is, and basically how to navigate the world. And so, the brooder is essentially supplying that mother hen for that very, very sensitive time point in that bird’s life.
Neil Dudley: So that mother hen has the job of raising chicks, but she’s not actually maybe laying the eggs those chicks come from or any of that? Are they’re actually hens-?
Dan Coady: No, so let me go back and then say that. So, in nature, that’s how you would have the hen would lay her eggs, and then she would hatch those eggs. We’re not having hens hatching eggs any longer. We’re using hatcheries to do that. So, we’ve basically removed the eggs from the mother hen. And then once those eggs are hatched, we have to then take control and thermoregulate for them.
Neil Dudley: And feed them? Do you feed them individually with like dropper or something? How does that work?
Dan Coady: They’re pretty good. So first 48 hours, they can live off their yoke stack – you know the yoke in your egg, well, that’s basically the food source for the growing embryo. And so, once that bird comes out, it’s ready to start going on real feed. So, we use a higher protein starter ration in the brooder, but it’s- this here is about 20% protein. Your starter ration is 22% protein. So, it’s not a whole lot different, but a little bit to help supply the protein that a rapidly growing chick needs.
Neil Dudley: How often is this water changed or cleaned?
Dan Coady: It’s cleaned every morning. So, when they pull this house, they’ll wipe out all the waters, dump them, and then move it to fresh ground.
Neil Dudley: I’m a bit of a chicken farmer myself. I didn’t mention this earlier, but we’ve got some, we’ve got about eight chickens in a coop at the house, and the girls always love – I’ve got three daughters – they love running out there.
Dan Coady: I’ve got three daughters too.
Neil Dudley: Oh yeah. Well, congratulations. How old are yours?
Dan Coady: Two, five and eight.
Neil Dudley: See, I’m nine, eight and five. So we’re in a very similar spot in life. Don’t be afraid to call me sometimes because I might call you sometime and say, man, I just need somebody to lean on. But anyways, they love running out there and picking those eggs. We just got them so they’re just starting to lay. And just the other day, my youngest ran out there and she found an egg. She was so excited. She come running into the house. Yeah, I little bitty egg. She’s running around – “Eggs! Eggs!” So, like I wish everybody, almost all kids could experience that because it is fun.
Dan Coady: It’s natural.
Neil Dudley: It’s natural. So, what we do, what we love to promote, or like to be a part of is having conversations with you guys, try to get people in- Not everybody’s going to get to come out to this farm. So, let’s give them an insight as much as we possibly can, so that they can understand, hey, these people, I could probably sit down and have a beer with that guy and enjoy the conversation although I’m never going to be on a chicken farm. So, to me, that’s a lot of fun and it makes selling protein a little bit more tangible or more, I guess, involved or personal.
Dan Coady: Okay. We can take you out to other birds as well.
Neil Dudley: How close are those? Are those about halfway there?
Dan Coady: Yes, sir. It’s kind of an exponential growth. So yeah, these are about four weeks. We’ll take them down about six weeks. The last two weeks, they get a whole lot bigger.
Neil Dudley: Have you got any that are close?
Dan Coady: Yes.
Neil Dudley: Let’s go look at some of those. That’d be cool. And then another story is we got Cornish hens like at Easter time. My first experience with raising chickens or any of that, we got some Cornish hens, and man, those suckers were big. All these laying breeds that we have now, they’re just so much different. But those- which I think those are like, grow too fast. I think something about them, they get so big they can’t walk and that kind of thing. But Paul was telling me the chickens are a way to fund the research for the I guess proprietary, innovative farming system. Is that, is this the proprietary, innovative farming system I’m looking at here?
Dan Coady: Well, I’m not sure I would word it that way.
Neil Dudley: Well, I’m putting- some of that just, yeah, I think it may not be the way he worded it, but it’s kind of the way I heard it.
Dan Coady: So, this certainly isn’t proprietary here. So, this was actually designed at Cobb Creek where I came from prior. And I think that this is a fantastic model for a farmer who already has a farming business. So, you said you ran cattle with your family before. Well, I think anybody who runs cattle should really be doing this as well. And the reason being is you can import so much [inaudible ] that it’s a huge boon to your property. And for a minimal time commitment, about half hour a day, you could pull an extra thousand dollars a month, thousand dollars a week. And so, if you have four or five of these coops, then you can cycle a batch of birds every week. And so, I was paying my cooperative growers about a thousand dollars a week for that. So, you buy five of these houses and it takes them about a half hour to an hour a day to do all the movement, the chores, and then we would guarantee purchase back all those birds. So, it was a great income for them.
Neil Dudley: -like a pork finisher, at least in that income realm, you can’t move those pork finishers so much. I guess there are a lot of people doing it outside completely with just some hotwire. But a farmer that will put up a little barn and finish some pigs in there, it doesn’t take a lot of space, and you can use all their manure stuff for your ground.
Dan Coady: Absolutely.
Neil Dudley: Okay. Let’s go look at some bigger ones. How many good dogs have you had?
Dan Coady: In my lifetime? Probably four.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, I think I can name about two. Pretty cool. What’s the cost to build one of those?
Dan Coady: Oh, you’re probably all in for a steady 500 bucks. I guess the steel price has changed. It might be a little higher now.
Neil Dudley: That’s fully furnished with all the necessary-?
Dan Coady: Before, the going rate was about $5,500 for the full structure and about another two grand for [feeders 56:37], waterers, chains, baseboards, the different accents.
Neil Dudley: Probably the smallest you could, the fewest you could do anything with would be five – four or five?
Dan Coady: Oh, you could easily run one, but then you’d be selling a batch a month. And a lot of folks will do that, and then I think that’s fine. But at that rate, you’re not- you already paid-
Neil Dudley: -how you spend every morning.
Dan Coady: Yeah. You already had investment of storing and handling feed. You’re already going to go out there and move them. And so, I wouldn’t say it takes you five times longer to run five houses as it does one. I’d say it maybe it takes you twice as long. Because you already paid the cost in having grain bins and handling facilities.
Neil Dudley: Who’d you buy all this water hose from? They must have liked you.
Dan Coady: Yeah. It was- I’m slowly switching this out. It was never the way it was supposed to be done. We can do it in a poly pipe or a much more robust- this is just a regular light duty garden hose. So, we find leaks all the time.
Neil Dudley: Well, your dog likes those leaks. That’s easy water.
Dan Coady: Yeah, he does.
Neil Dudley: Okay. Are these the big chickens?
Dan Coady: The big chickens are going to be right over there.
Neil Dudley: Okay. Let’s go check them out. When they get bigger, they clean it off better?
Dan Coady: Oh yeah. They take it down quite well.
Neil Dudley: Oh man, that has to be so good for the soil, all that scratching. And it’s just like putting cattle in a small spot. They stomp it up so much and tear it up.
Dan Coady: That’s exactly right. That’s how grasses co-evolved.
Neil Dudley: Right. We kind of have a breeding stock heard, my family anyways. We’re kind of raising registered for commercial operations that want a purebred bull to put on their cows.
Dan Coady: You should have brought one with you. I’ve got some cows to put them on.
Neil Dudley: I’ve been meaning to talk to Paul about that a little bit. Where are your cows?
Dan Coady: Oh, they’re just there. It’s just 40 head. And they’re, if you’re finishing animals for beef, they’re not in a condition I’d be proud of. And that’s just because I’m not using them for beef at this stage. I’m using them to take down the desert.
Neil Dudley: And so, they never get any feed. They’re just grass all the time?
Dan Coady: Grass all the time.
Neil Dudley: And what breed do you have? The kind of English stuff or-?
Dan Coady: They are I think he called them [inaudible 59:43], which is a cross. So, we got them from a friend of ours who owns a large dairy up North. And so, they’re sort of a dairy cross that will allow them to use the cows for milk and the bull calves for beef.
Neil Dudley: Okay. Cool. Alright, let’s get some footage of these bigger birds. Did you already do that? They can lay a pile of poop, girls. Watch your feet. So they go sorting through them. So, somebody has the expertise of walking in here and saying that one, that one, that one’s ready.
Dan Coady: Yeah. You can just pick them up and feel them and you know what the right bird feels like.
Neil Dudley: It takes a while though. You didn’t, the first bird you ever grabbed, you didn’t know that.
Dan Coady: You put it in your hands and you’ll feel the- when they have the feathers and they’re moving around, their shape changes a lot. But when you actually pick up a bird with two hands and hold on to it, you’ll feel what the shape is and the weight. And you go, that feels right, because that’s too small, and if it’s too big, it’s got to go anyway. So, once you’re at about right there, that’s the perfect sized bird.
Neil Dudley: When they get this way, I mean, do you have a, you just walk up to them and catch them? Do you have a-?
Dan Coady: So we do it at night. So, at night, the birds all go to sleep. So, you walk in and you just pick them up. They don’t run from you. You try to get them now, they’d run it, and then make it all dusty in here.
Neil Dudley: There you go. I would have, that’s kind of what I was thinking. I was like, can I watch that? I mean, whenever somebody- It’s not as exciting as I was picturing in my head, trying to catch-
Dan Coady: Nah, we use red light. Well, yeah, we can get about 3000 picked up in, I don’t know, a little less than two hours.
Neil Dudley: When you say at night, what do you mean? Like 2:00 AM or-?
Dan Coady: Because our processing facility is in LA, it’s about an hour, hour and a half from here, you don’t really want to get in rush hour traffic in the morning, especially with a live haul, so we will collect the birds at around 10 o’clock at night. And then you’ve got to clear the feed out of them anyway, so we can box them up in the transport crates. And then they depart for the processer probably around 2:30 in the morning. And then the processor will take them, and start unloading them around 4:30 to 5:00 AM, and I believe they start killing at like 6:30, 7:00.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, now, you said clear the feed out, which just means- So you’re just getting them off of feed so they’re not pooping anymore for how long? Or is that what you mean by that?
Dan Coady: Yes, absolutely. So, they’re still going to poop because you’d have to really take them off feed for a long time to eliminate all the manure coming out the backside. But it will- we can certainly slow that down some. But the main concern is generally feed left in the crop because what they’re going to do is they’re going to bleed the birds first. And then they’re going to scald and then remove the feathers. So once the birds’ feathers are removed, now you can remove the head. It depends on how you’re doing it, but you can also remove the feet at that point, and then you can shackle the bird for evisceration. So, the inspector can look at the innards. Well, when you eviscerate the bird, you want to pull the crop out with the birds. If that crop is full of feed, you’re going to push, get feed all over your plant. And then all of a sudden, you get [inaudible 1:03:40] on your carcass. And so, it’s just for ease of processing, cleanliness.
Neil Dudley: Sure. Food safety, all those kinds of things. Alright. Thank you so much for the tour. It’s really educational. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it very much.
Dan Coady: Absolutely.
Neil Dudley: Well, we’ve been around the pasture, we’ve been around the city, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it, getting to know all about Pasture Bird. Thanks for listening to the Cowboy Perspective. Check all these products out, all the Pasture Bird products out on the Simple Grocer: www.thesimplegrocery.com. Go check it out. By the way, you can get a special the Cowboy Perspective discount if you enter TCP in the discount code. Thanks for listening. God bless.