Poultry Slaughter Workshops

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Jim

2 Slaughter Workshop’s

June 16,2011   Orange County CCE

Cornerstone Farm Ventures in cooperation with Orange County Cornell Cooperative Extension is hosting a Poultry Processing Workshop on June 16, 2011. The class will run from 10am to 4pm.

This workshop will be conducted in both classroom and in a poultry processing facility. Students will learn about the proper techniques for processing poultry, health, sanitation and safety issues, HACCP, handling, packaging, storing as well as equipment necessary for processing poultry.

The morning session will be in the classroom and cover health, sanitation, HACCP, legal issues and an overview of proper equipment.

The afternoon session will include hands-on  instruction for those who desire to learn how a small scale poultry processing plant operates. Participants will learn the proper techniques for humane slaughtering  as well as techniques for packaging, storage and sale.

The knowledge learned at this workshop will equip the poultry producer with the skills to process poultry on their own farm. Class size is limited. Pre-registration is necessary.

Check back for registration information.

Glynwood Center Slaughter Workshop

The second slaughter workshop will be held in June 25, 2011 in conjunction with the Glynwood Farm in Cold Spring, NY.

This workshop will be the third class we have held at the Glynwood Center on poultry processing and we have been filled to capacity every year. Glynwood Center is located in the Hudson Valley. We will follow the same basic format as that above including a tour of Glynwood’s poultry operation. $75.00 per person includes lunch and materials. 

Polyface Farm Field Days

Cornerstone Farm Ventures will once again be at the Polyface Farm Field July 9, 2011. We are honoured to be able to attend this invitation only event. Joel Salatin will take you on a personal tour of Polyface Farm giving you an insiders look at what a successful sustainable farm looks like.

If you plan on attending please stop by and see us.  For more information or to register on-line for the Polyface Farm Field Day go to www.acresusa.com

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Pastured Poultry Workshop

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Jim

Cornerstone Farm Ventures will be hosting a Pastured Poultry Workshop on May 14, 2011 in Norwich NY. If you are new to raising poultry or have been at it for a number of years, this workshop will provide you with both new and useful information.

Chicken Guy Jim McLaughlin will lead off the workshop with his renowned Pastured Poultry 101 that will give you all you need to know to begin raising poultry. From purchasing day old chicks to grow out, all the way to processing and marketing this fast paced presentation will give you take home information to start your own pastured poultry operation.

Jeff Mattocks long time nutritionist with the Fertrell Company will follow with Pastured Poultry 201 which will go more in-depth with feed and watering requirements, poultry nutrition, and tips on natural and conventional treatments for poultry.

To conclude the presentations Dr. Jarra Jagne of the Cornell Poultry Diagnostic Laboratory will present on poultry disease diagnosis and flock health. This session will provide you with tools to help manage the health of your poultry flock.

Class size is limited, registration is mandatory, there is a $20 registration fee. To register or for more information call Cornerstone Farm Ventures at 607.334.9962, info@cornerstone-farm.com or call Dr. Tro Bui at Cornell University at 607.592.1438 tvb2@cornell.edu you can also register on-line Click Here

Cornerstone Farm Ventures is committed to providing tools, information and equipment to pastured poultry farmers across the globe to improve our food supply and protect our environment

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Electric Netting for Poultry

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Jim

Many pastured poultry producers have found that the best way to contain free-range chickens and pastured poultry is with electric netting. Electric netting more than keeping the chickens in keeps the predators out. Broilers tend to stay close to the feed and water so they don’t tend to wander as far as layers. So a hot fence will keep predators out of their range area.

If you want to keep this good looking guy to the left from getting away…read on.

Layers due tend to range far and wide and will lay their eggs in a hedgerow if given the chance so it is imperative to contain them in and also keep the predators out.

Predator control is especially important to pastured poultry producers because when your birds are out and away from the farmstead predators quickly discover they have a great tasting meal awaiting them.

Electric fences or more accurately electric netting are much less expensive and easy to set up and move than traditional confinement methods.

The best fence is one that will be high enough to keep dogs, coyotes, and foxes from jumping over it yet also tight enough at the bottom to keep chicks from going through it giving a new meaning to “meals to go”.

One model for ranging hens is to graze ¼ acre every 3 days per 700 layers. That equates to a circle made up of 3 lengths of netting. Of course you must supply feed for the birds as well. Actual conditions on the ground are what you need to use to determine when to move the birds to a new area. In a drought there may not be the forage necessary to support that many birds for 3 days. In that case either supplement with more feed or move them more often.

You fence may short out if grass grows up against the bottom wire so you may need to mow in the area of the netting. Also make sure you have a large enough fence charger to maintain a hot charge. A minimum recommendation is a .25 joule low-impendence charger minimum per net. So for 4 nets connected together you would need at least a 1 joule charger.

Don’t forget to have ample water for both layers and broilers. A bird without water will not grow and in the case of layers may stop laying and never start again. It can be very costly letting your birds run out of water.

Visit our website for fencing options

Thanks again for dropping by and keep looking up!

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BEC Poultry Products

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Jim

There is an amazing show that comes to Atlanta Georgia every January called the International Poultry Expo. I went to the IPE for the first time this year and I have to say I was very surprised at the quality and number of displays of poultry production and processing equipment under one roof. The IPE went out of their way to make us feel right at home and enjoy what for some could be a boring event. There were over 20,000 people who attended this year’s event and I was just one of them.

One of the contacts we mad was with BEC Poultry Products located in the UK. The Broiler Equipment Company (BEC) was founded in the UK over 50 years ago, and is credited with developing the first round plastic automatic drinker for the poultry and game bird rearing industries. BEC products have now been in use for over forty years and have developed an enviable reputation for reliability all over the world.

We were quite impressed with their product line at the IPE and will be importing them into the US soon.

They are great guys who have a desire to provide equipment to smaller farms as well as conventional large farms. A couple of products that will fit very well in the pastured poultry line are the Emperor Feeder which is a self-feeder for all types of range birds. The feeder is made of a durable UV stabilized recycled Polymer and has a unique rain water catch system that can help store water for the birds as well. It holds about 150 lbs. of feed and allows the chickens to self-feed on pasture. It will retail in the $100 range.

One other product we found excellent for our farmers is the Mini Cup Drinker a unique, self-filling, multi-use drinker that is fitted to any sized water container. It enables any container to be re-used as a flexible drinker for any breed of bird and its unique float-valve system ensures that it is always full. This drinker when mounted to a 5 gal pail or to a 15 gal teat dip container will make good use of the old containers you have lying around.

We don’t have either of these items in stock yet but check our website often, as we will put notices up as soon as we have them.

Once again Thanks for Stopping By and Keep Looking Up!

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What’s The Difference Between A Chicken Plucker And A Chicken Picker?

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Jim

I remember as a kid watching the Smothers Brothers variety show. Remember variety shows? Well that’s another story. Anyway, Tommy Smothers sang a song about his old man being a “Cotton Pickin’ Finger Lickin’ Chicken Plucker. What do you think about that?” it was quite a funny show and if one wasn’t very careful could get themselves in a bit of trouble with the censors. Even today, if you do a web search of “Chicken Plucker” the lyrics to that song may very well show up.

That show was probably my first encounter with the combination of words and at the time had no idea that I would be selling chicken pluckers all over the world. When Cornerstone first started there were only two companies selling small size chicken pluckers, Ashley Machine and Pickwick. Both of these companies have been around a long time and many of their pluckers are still in operation that are 30-40 years old. Like most companies, they are under different ownership now than back then but both are still good quality machines. We started with Ashley first and began selling there line of pluckers in 2000. We started with Pickwick the following year after I met Chan Zuber at a trade show and asked if I could represent Pickwick through our web site. Tom Knase runs Pickwick today and Jim Israel took over Ashley from one of his relatives and still runs Ashley Machine.

So what’s the difference between a chicken plucker and a chicken picker? I’m glad you asked its a few miles. Yep the difference between a chicken plucker and a chicken picker is where you are from. I’ve always known them as chicken pickers but it seems a lot more people call them chicken pluckers.

It seems that the definition of a plucker is “To remove or detach by grasping and pulling abruptly with the fingers; or to remove abruptly or forcibly. While the definition of a picker is a worker who picks something (as crops) b: a tool, implement, or machine used in picking something. Therefore, the logic would be that the person who does the work is a chicken picker and the machine that does the work is a chicken plucker.

So there you have it a person is a chicken picker and a machine is a chicken plucker. Amazing what you can come up with when you do a little research?

Cornerstone now sells chicken pluckers from 5 different companies, 3 of which were not even around 10 years ago! Stop by our website if you’re looking for anything that has to do with chicken pluckers.

As always, Thanks for Stopping By and Keep Looking Up!

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Looking for Poultry Processing Equipment?

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Jim

Do you believe in Divine intervention? In previous blogs I’ve talked about how we got started marketing poultry processing equipment, I would like to go a little more in depth here.

I worked for an organization in the 1990′s called Central New York Resource Conservation and Development, CNY RC&D for short. Part of my job was to work with poultry producers and processors in Central NY. For years we had chickens around the house and I wasn’t particularly interested in working with chickens after all I was hired as a sheep specialist. But needless to say I relented and began working with chicken farmers. I had heard a now famous evangelist named Joel Salatin convince me the only way to live was to raise pastured poultry. So I began to promote pastured poultry.

This led to a predicament, folks were able to raise the chickens but were unable to process the birds because all the poultry processing plants had closed down long ago. So we did what farmers do we built poultry processing equipment to do the job. Our first attempt was not to bad and we built processing equipment that could handle about 50 birds an hour. The next step was to mount the poultry processing equipment on a trailer so other farmers could use it thus cutting everybody’s expenses.

From 1995 until 2000 I oversaw the scheduling of what became known as the MPU which stands for Mobile Processing Unit. The MPU had a complete line of poultry processing equipment on it including chilling tanks for cooling the finished birds. You may recall the dot com crash in 1999-2000 which suddenly made grant money really tight and my position was eliminated.

Here is the Divine part. I went to collect unemployment and was found to have had such a unique job that the odds of me finding one like it were actually below zero. NYS at the time had a program that allowed me to start my own business and still collect unemployment. So instead of going back to driving a truck (which I actually enjoyed, but my body didn’t) I began Cornerstone Farm Ventures a company that sold and serviced poultry processing equipment. That little start up went from an unemployment salary to a full time job that employs several people in our busy months. I am my own boss and am using my gifts to help others and be a blessing to various organizations because we give a portion of our profit away every month. Cornerstone Farm Ventures now sells poultry processing equipment all over the world, who would have thought?

As always, thanks for stopping by, have a great day, and keep looking up!

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Eggstravaganza

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Jim

Eggstravaganza

Is there a correct way to package eggs? Some would ask what difference does it make. Ibelieve it makes a big difference. Just before the egg is laid the eggshell is deposited around the egg in the lower part of the oviduct of the hen. During formation of the egg, the egg moves through the oviduct small end first and just before it is released it rotatesand comes out large end first.

There is an air cell in the large end of the egg, which if the egg were fertile and were to be used to incubate a chick, would be important for the chicks development. If the egg is placed large end down in the carton it will force the white or albumen to have to move because air will always rise. This movement of the albumen can loosen the yoke and white causing, I believe, a less structured egg.

An egg placed on its small end allows the air sac to stay at the top which allows the white to settle into the curved bottom cradling it a more natural manner and allowing the yokes to stay intact helping it when it is cracked.

In addition when you place all the eggs small end down it makes the contents of the carton look more uniform. Many producers don’t bother to package correctly and as a result have both small and large ends facing up with loos like you have all different size eggs. So when the customer opens the carton to check for cracks, to the eye, it is unsightly.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great day, and keep looking up!

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Blog It

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Jim

My First Blog

It seems logical as a new blogger to give you a brief overview of what brought me to this place.

In 2000 Cornerstone Farm Ventures was birthed out of requests from farmers as to where they could purchase poultry processing equipment. From the mid-90s to 2000 I worked for Central New York Resource Conservation and Development Project. Part of my job was to introduce individuals to raising poultry on pasture. Part of that process included processing poultry; we wanted to allow farmers to maximize their profits by processing their own poultry on farm. We built our first mobile processing unit in 1995 out of used and homemade equipment. The mobile unit was a huge success and as a result of that one when I left RC&D farmers continued to call me and ask me where they could purchase poultry processing equipment. That was the start of Cornerstone Farm Ventures.

In 2001 we begin contacting equipment manufacturers about becoming dealers for them, and Ashley equipment was our first company we began doing business with. Pickwick was next and then Poultryman, Featherman, and Dux. Today we represent many companies related to poultry equipment.

In the summer of 2010 a friend of mine, Dennis McIntee, said “Jim lets grow your business” and that was the beginning of what we are now calling Cornerstone 2.0. Cornerstone 2.0 started with moving our business out of our house and into an office-warehouse location. The next phase of cornerstone 2.0 would be to update our website that we had built and maintained since we started the business in 2000.

Dennis McIntee introduced me to Rick Hubbell who designed this site. Rick has vast knowledge in web based businesses and has giving us a totally new look and site to meet our future needs. This blog is the result of Cornerstone 2.0 moving into the blogosphere and with the advent of this website we have more products, more information, and more offerings available. Originally Cornerstone focused primarily on poultry processing equipment and minerals and fertilizer for the dairy industry we have dropped the dairy end and are now expanding into poultry production equipment as well.

We will use this blog to introduce new products as well discuss questions we get on a daily basis.

So here we are with our first blog giving you a quick history of our business and what our plans are for the future. I hope you’ll stop back as we attempt to maintain timely articles and information that will help you grow your business, be better farmers, better livestock producers, better marketers, and hopefully together that will make us all better people.

Have a great day and keep looking up!

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Chicken Talk Rocks!

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Rick

The Chicken Guy didn’t earn that name overnight. Working for CNY RC&D in the 1990′s broughchicken-jim Chicken Guy into the pastured poultry lime light. After meeting Joel Salatin he was nevere the same again. In 2000 he began Cornerstone Farm Ventures which has continued to meet the equipment needs for poultry processing and production.

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