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What else would you call it, when a grower gives his chickens & turkeys a biochemical additive in order to make them grow faster? That's what nearly every other poultry grower in America does.

Antibiotics, we realize, don't sound all that sinister. We take them ourselves when we get sick. But in the poultry business, the idea is not to make sick birds well again. The industry practice is to give chickens & turkeys small doses of the drugs in order to cause a bit of water retention, raising the weight of the bird by as much as 15%, thereby cutting a week off of the growing (and feeding) time.

We at Shelton's find the practice not only unethical (selling water weight at the price of poultry), but downright dangerous: low levels of antibiotics can actually weaken the natural ability of the poultrys' immune system to fight off disease. Sorry; we won't do it. Somebody has to draw the line.

I know you don't want to hear about this, but it's important. Somewhere down the line, chickens & turkeys have to be processed. You know...all those operations that turn a chicken & turkey into, well, chicken & turkey...all those things that tend to give vegetarians the willies.

The processing operation you have to watch out for is called evisceration, that is, the removal of the entrails. The USDA allows it to be done by machine, at a speed fast enough to make the occasional rupture, with its resultant contamination, a virtual certainty. Fast cheap and sloppy is the rule.

At Shelton's, we do it all by hand, at a speed that's much slower than the normal industry practice. It's clean, careful and safe...and a little more expensive. but I'll bet you don't mind.

Do you?

There are advantages to being a family business like Shelton's. Three generations of our family are involved in running it, and that means that our traditions of quality, value and nutritional integrity are never taken lightly.

Our chickens & turkeys aren't the only place this commitment to excellence shows up. We also raise ducks under the same family philosophy: a free range environment, a drug free diet that we've developed, proven and refined over the last half century, and clean, careful processing procedures.
We don't limit our horizons to providing the best possible poultry to discerning shoppers and fine restaurants. We also offer an ever expanding line of quality natural foods, delicious and healthful, made with nothing, but real ingredients...never anything artificial, unnatural, or even superfluous. The family would never approve.

 


They don't grow in crowded pens, either. Chickens & turkeys grow best in a 'barnyard' setting, like your great grandfather's farm used to have. Chickens & turkeys grow healthier if they're allowed to walk around in the open air and sunshine, free to scratch at the ground and peck away at whatever takes their fancy. This is known as a "free range" environment.

Not many chickens or turkeys get this kind of freedom. It's a lot more cost efficient for growers to pen them up in elevated wire cages, restricting their movement so they can't do anything except eat and get fat...fast. We at Shelton's believe that efficiency at the expense of quality is for the birds, so to speak. So our chickens & turkeys are raised only in free range conditions. We figured you would appreciate that.

You're welcome.