Merri’s Recent Comments

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  Chicken or the Egg?

  This column is almost 2 years old and the previous response from April '07, but I felt it was important to respond.  I belonged to FFA throughout high school and graduated from UC Davis.  I also am an organic, natural nut living in the Bay Area.  I started a small batch of hens about 4 years ago for fresh eggs and continue to enjoy these eggs from the same hens and their daughters.  There is absolutely no comparison in the taste between farm eggs and industrial eggs.  The latter taste like cardboard to me.  I also just finished out and processed 21 Cornish-x red broilers - my first ever attempt at raising my own meat - and would like to dispel some misinformation in the column and some of the responses.  First of all, the cornish-x birds ARE genetically designed to gain weight fast.  They are basically eating machines.  The reason the cornish-x birds available in stores are are ready for slaughter in 4 to 6 weeks (sometimes 6-8 weeks for the roasters) is because they are under lights sometimes up to 23 hours a day.  You give them the opportunity to eat and they will do so non-stop.  IF you raise them according to more natural rhythms, they don't gain weight as fast which doesn't stress out their cardiovascular systems or overwhelm their joints.  Because I started my batch at the beginning of October, I needed to keep them under a heat lamp until they had real feathers and then some on the really cold nights (<35F).  After they were able to keep warm naturally by sleeping next to each other, they ate only when there was daylight and slept at night.  At night, they slept in an enclosed, protected space and during the day, they foraged, dust bathed, and ran(yes, I mean "ran" not walked) around in my yard.  They got a certain amount of food per day (organic only) and once it was gone, that was it.  I monitored their weight by randomly grabbing chickens and feeling the sharpness or lack thereof of the keelbones.  I processed mine just after the middle of the month in January.  They were 3.5 months old - the hens averaged about 5 lbs after processing and the roosters about 6-7 pounds.  I actually waited a little too long to process as my roosters started to crow and harass the hens during the last week and a half.  SO, they will grow only as fast or slow as how much you feed them and how many hours a day they are allowed to eat.  These chickens cost me between 1.75 and 2 bucks per pound to raise.  Unfortunately, it is very hard for poultry producers to be economically viable raising organic, pastured poultry unless they are lucky to find a niche market.  The money is in the volume.  Another misconception is that these birds are too stupid to survive outside of a broiler house.  Well, mine were definitely not as smart as my backyard chickens (the egg layers and attending roosters), but they got along just fine.  They went back to the chicken house just after dark, had no problems finding water, were able to forage independently over varied terrain (tall grass, shrubbery, ditch with water in it), and came when I called.  I started with 25 day old chicks, lost two early on and two others to predators later (one of them probably to a predator of the human variety).  I think they were probably some of the happiest broiler chickens ever with only one bad day in their entire lives. I have been wanting to try this grand chicken experiment for awhile now and only after I found a local small USDA processor did it become a reality.  I know how to slaughter, but it's a really messy job so I'm fine leaving it to someone else.  The facility I found also uses a more humane method of slaughter than the big industrial facilities so this was an added bonus.  It cost me $2.75 per bird.  The work of keeping these birds was not really that challenging and actually very minor compared to what I thought it would be.  After the birds reached a certain age, they were pretty much on auto-pilot.  All I had to do was feed and water.  I will definitely be doing this again once we get through our current batch (in the freezer) because I am here to tell you that home grown, pastured, organic HAPPY chicken is the best damn tasting chicken in the ENTIRE WORLD and nothing can compete with it.  I hope I've inspired some "food for thought" with these comments :-)On Umbra on free-range chickens and eggs posted 1 year, 10 months ago 13 Responses