OFI 1693: Finding The Method And Niche That You Can Serve | FFA SAE Edition | Adam Johnson | Sleepy Eye FFA

Adam Johnson is the chapter president of the Sleepy Eye FFA Chapter in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.  He is also the 2022 Minnesota State Proficiency winner in the category of poultry production and a 2022 National Silver Award winner.

During his time in high school Adam has been raising meat chickens during the summer for his supervised agricultural experience.  He has been using the pastured poultry model and chicken tractor model taught by Joel Salatin, with a twist.  Adam and his family do all of the butchering of the birds, and they use a cylindrical chicken plucker to remove the feathers.  However, they found that there were still small feathers to be pulled and pin feathers to be burnt off of the birds, even after doing that.  That is a very time consuming process.

To remedy this extra time that is needed, Adam and his family started skinning the birds to circumvent the need for this process.  Of course, there will be customers who want the skin on the birds.  So, they have shifted their business model to finding customers who want the birds skinned.  This has worked, and now they have altered their operation so it serves everyone equally.