A Fair Trade

We have had quite a lot of interest in our poultry lately and have a waiting list for chickens. Instead of selling them I have been trading them. One of my work clients from Orange wanted three chickens for her children so we swapped them for a bag of  chicken starter  food. the deal is that if they turn our to be roosters they can bring them back and swap them for a pullet. Have not heard from them so hopefully they are all pullets. We have actually had a greater proportion of pullets than roosters in the last few batches. There is one little rooster, only about eight weeks old and crowing already, looks and sounds very funny. Our neighbours wanted six chickens as well and they took them last week. They are farmers so I said they could swap me some mulch hay or some wheat. Patrick turned up on Saturday with his ute loaded with three big round bales of hay and two bags of feed wheat. A pretty fair trade I think. We usually buy mulch hay for the garden and this will go a long way.



I think it is interesting that these days most farmers around here don't keep domestic animals. chooks, goats, cows etc and they don't kill their own meat anymore either. So I feel like we have been a bit of an influence as a few of  our neighbours are now keeping chooks. Once they start getting fresh eggs they will remember why it is worth doing. not to mention the benefits of scrap disposal, manure manufacturing and garden maintenance that the chooks do.
Six of the little turkeys have gone to another neighbour, they are a trade for the use of their incubator. they haven't been using it at all and we have had one lot of turkeys, one lot of chickens and have another lot of chickens on the go. I already have someone who wants some of the next lot. Now I just need to sell or swap another six turkeys and we are back to a reasonable amount of poultry for us.

Comments

Darren (Green Change) said…
I love trading stuff too, instead of bringing money into the equation.

I recently helped someone clear some trees that blew down, and got myself 2 trailer-loads of firewood, a dozen or so bamboo poles, 5 banana plants, and a mulberry bush. Good one!

I've also found that home-brewed beer is a valuable commodity. I traded a fencer some beer for the ends of some barbed wire rolls. They were too short for him to use, but I got 4 rolls of maybe 20-30 metres each, which is great for making small pens.
January 14, 2011 at 9:35 AM
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