Why You Don't Have To Get Chicks From Us

We have refocused and making it cheaper and easier for all to have  access to good tasting and healthy chicken meat.  You may grow your own food or get from farmers you know and trust.  Get to know your farmer.  Its all about farming :)

How did we make it cheaper and more accessible to grow clean meat?  We run trials and have gotten the results we wanted by using the white chicks that are used for commercial poultry raising.  

When given probiotics/fermented plant juices and pastured for the same time as its colored cousins, they have the same taste, and surely the healthy benefits are in how it was raised.

We are teaching you a concept.  We are selling you the idea of raising/eating well.  Food that you may grow yourself.  Food that you may entrust to farmers you really know.

If for some reason you can't find dayold chicks in your area, or you want the brand that we use, then we can cater them to you.  But again, the ,most ideal is get the chicks from your area.  The point was to make it cheaper and easy for all farmers.

Another plus side:  Easier to teach when we aren't selling anything to you :)

White Christmas

At four (4) weeks now, they will be seeing you in December :)

The recently held Poultry Show was very motivating.  People embraced the idea of "yes, the whites can be pastured".  Low cost, easy to find, safe chicken for all!

For us at Solraya, it isn't just an "idea" anymore.  It had been ran and tested several batches.  Harvested and taste tested at different intervals.  For our pastured chickens, we still go with a slow developing chicken.  Let it age and naturally farmed....it will give you great tasting and healthy chickens :)

We will be happy to explain them to you during AGRILINK 2010.

Healthy Gizzard Sisig

The gizzard is naturally crunchy so it gives the healthy sisig the needed crunch and different textures. No chicken meat, just pure gizzard. To make it creamy, we added chicken liver. This is one of our sought after products, the healthy gizzard sisig.

You may sizzle it in a hot plate, heat it up in a thick skillet to give it that brown and toasted look. Simply, it is OK to heat it up in the microwave.

Serving suggestions: over rice, wrapped in lettuce, topping in salad, using tortilla wraps, top crackers. Endless variations with your healthy and tasty food choices.

Holding Well

After several trial batches and taste tastes, the whites stood up well to the colored cousins.

The taste was really in a slow developing chicken. Harvest at a much later date and encourage slow growth and free ranging abilities, you get great tasting chicken. As for the health benefits? It is in how you raise and feed the chickens. No antibiotics, no hormones - translates to healthy chicken on our plates :)

From day1, they are given probiotics, fermented plant juices and fresh herbs. See the red siling labuyo?

When left out on their own, they enjoy the same things that their colored cousins do. Look at her run with glee to her treasure find of fallen Aratiles fruits. I will love them too for myself!

They also love playing around.

And rest. Notice that unlike when their white sisters are raised in captivity, they always seem sleepy? But when let out and free ranged, they are always alert. Even when resting, they prefer to sit by in their terrace.

The white chicks are far cheaper and easily accessible to all. There will be a favorite poultry supply store in the market, selling these. Just like the Sunshine Chicks, look for their properly printed chick boxes so you know you are getting premium grades of chicks.

Just for the record. We have type casted them for the caged and industrial chickens only. They may be free ranged :)

Open 9am to 9pm, Drive Thru

Sunny in Santiago is now open 9am to 9pm, starting today.

We had the soft opening less than a month ago, and started selling at 5pm til 9pm. Since we advertised that we delivered, we had been getting calls and walk in customers as early as 11am!

That made us see how we will fare today opening at 8am to do cleaning and setting for the lunch crowd.

We're setting out a ramp so we can wheel up and out the ovens. That will make the pick up and ordering more accessible for customer and us. Will really be like a drive thru thing! Plus greater visibility with our lighting outside.

Your mind should be nonstop in reinventing and marketing.

Wish us good :) Salamat po

Rule #1, Look After Health

We are the first to always say that our Sunshines are not for breeding, they are raised for meat purposes.

Inspite of all those....we still get the so-called "dispersals". The group who will buy "ready to slaughter" at live weights. They then "disperse" what they may term as breeders or the layers.

If meant as layers, that is OK. The Sunshines are dual purpose...meat and table egg production.

I remember once that I got a comment on this blog and a text on my phone, about our selling breeders when we say they are not for breeding....or something to that effect. Doc Rey called the person.

We can't think of any such transaction, until we traced it to a branch of ours who had a recent sale on live weight transaction. Supposedly for the purpose of slaughtering. Surely, breeders can't be bought for PHP150/kg :)

The person turned out to be a veterinarian so they were talking on the same level. This veterinarian wasn't party to the term breeders etc. He was just the recipient. The guy the project was turned over to. So, he knew exactly where the problem was :(

Two months after, he calls Doc Rey. The chickens were thin and lost a lot of weight.

Were they being taken cared of?

Were they being fed?

Veterinarian talking to another veterinarian. Surely, even if it was hog grower that was being fed to your chickens, they will still GROW...delayed yes...but as long as being fed, they won't decrease in weight. At the very least, they will not gain, but not lose :(

He will look into the management...

Next sentence. They haven't laid eggs.

Please don't forget that we say chickens don't need roosters to lay their table eggs. They don't need layer mash to lay. BUT, bear in mind...they need to be healthy chickens, to be able to lay eggs.

Malnourished hens will probably not lay eggs. You will have to condition them and bring them at par with their healthy layer counterparts :)

Grow Your Own

From the very start, we had been advocating for the backyard and weekend farmers to grow their own food....mostly chicken :)

The restaurants and food service industry had been primarily a customer for the small commercial growers.

Recently, maybe because of volume needed, logistics...some restaurants have decided to grow their own Sunshines.

You say they can't do it because they don't know how to raise? That was what I thought so too at the onset. But I realized, they had been growing their own white chickens to make sure they get constant supply...so they do have a team of poultry men. Most see the logic of getting a good brooding man, then the feeders and rangers are new hires.

Where's the logic to that? They don't have bad habits on raising chickens. weheheheheh

"Growers don't fret :)" You are not losing a market. It should be opportunity for you to be creative and get several steps more up the ladder...or several steps sideways, where there is a lot more elbow room for play.

Honest, if I was a grower...serving the restaurants is hard. It's OK if they have minimal requirements, but if they are big? Let them grow their own, and you will be led to something better.

Now when we go around, we don't just do farm visits...but taste tests as well!

Healthworld Expo 2008

October 2-4, SMX Convention Center, will have the Healthworld Expo 2008.

We will be joining this exhibit, incorporating Beauty, Health Care and Medical Tourism. It coincides with the Millionaire Show, a lifestyle expo.

Seminars and product discussions on the benefits of grass fed chickens will be presented.

Excited to take part in a different kind of trade show, a step higher, another level. It is a notch nearer to fuse our goals.

Register online here, to avoid lines.

Sunshine on Farmer TJ's Rangers

There is no need for expensive buildings to partake of tasty and healthy Sunshine Chickens on your table. It requires a lot of love though :)

His' Sunshine's weight will prove it all.