The Making of "Chicken"-- for beginners

This post is dedicated to everyone that has ever wondered how exactly we farmer people do it. 

This Mitchell and Web clip is a humorously oversimplified version of how most people think the "chicken" they buy from the store comes to be.

Surprisingly or not, there is a little more to it than just getting some chickens and killing them or not.

To give our reader some perspective, once upon a time, people that lived on a farm kept chickens for eggs and sometimes dinner. Your hens layed about 2 to 4 eggs in a week. If a hen stopped laying for most any reason, she went into the stewpot (no matter how much you liked her.) If you ended up with more than one rooster, you kept the one you liked the best and made sunday dinner out of the others. Chickens like this started life as eggs laid by the mother hen, hatched by her, and nurtured by her until they were grown at around 6 months of age when they would either become new laying hens, or be made into meat.

Over time, people began to zoom into "traits" they liked best about chickens, and mated chickens that had those traits together, and developed distinct chicken breeds that were best at making eggs, or best at making muscle (meat.)
The baby boom and industrialization of the 1950s drove poultry scientists to develop a better meat chicken that would feed people even more efficiently.

The real face of KFC... note the HUUUGE tracts of land.

And so the "cornish cross" was born. All of the chicken purchased in a grocery store these days-- and even the majority of small farm families are this type of bird.

A quick compare of the bird at left, to the bird at right, should pretty much sum up why this type of bird makes a good amount of chicken, but not only is he big, his breasts are HUGE compared to a traditional chicken. Not only that, but he grows to this massive size in HALF the time it takes an ordinary chicken to grow. Not only does it take less time, a shorter life means less food is spent to make double the meat.

Amazing facet of science and industry, there are NO downsides to this....

Oh except of course for the fact that chickens that grow so quickly are prone to leg problems and organ failures, or that they are bred so much to be eating machines they don't really act like chickens. In fact, if you give these guys a real chicken yard or pasture, they will stand pretty much in the same 2 feet of space forever. Eating and pooping. Eating and pooping. Just as long as they can reach the food. There also isn't really much chance at having a "change of heart" or "rescuing" these types of birds. Eventually, the weight is too much and they die of natural causes in a few months. (The average chicken can live many years)

It sounds like a pretty terrible existence, right? So why does everyone use them? Well, 'cause we like chicken. For most people the cost of feed and how quickly a person can "finish" 20 chickens and get them into a freezer and be done with it. Some people go with the crosses because it helps their resolve to know the bird can't possibly live a long and happy life so they might as well make it into the meat they need.

Both the commercial chicken market and the family farmer orders these baby chickens from a hatchery-- a business who specializes in breeding chickens, hatching the eggs and selling the chicks. A commercial farm likely receives their chicks delivered on a truck, while a family who orders a box of 10, 20 or 50 chicks receives them via US mail, and pick them up at the post office. "Broiler chicks" as they are called, are often appealing as they are a short term commitment, with a lot of return.

The chickens are kept in a warm box with a heat lamp, and fed "chick starter"-- a baby chicken food packed full of nutrients they need to grow healthy.
When they get bigger and feathers grow in to replace the fuzz, the chicks don't need the lamp anymore, and eventually the birds go outside (or into a bigger pen in the barn if the weather is cold) and are fed a "grower" or "meat bird" food designed to give them protein to make muscle and just enough calcium to build the bones to carry it.

"cornish game hens", are these same chickens harvested when they are young and small, as the HUGE 6 pound roasting chicken harvested when it's about 3 months old, the only difference is time and age.

The rest of the process most people can figure out on their own.. the chicken is killed, feathers plucked, undesireable parts removed, and sent on to be sold in pieces, or made into chicken products like nuggets or noodle soup.

Many people "in the know" maintain that these fast growers taste like a watered down version of "chicken flavor" and that the old "heritage" breeds may take more time to grow, but are worth the wait.

I encourage anyone who gets the chance to sample a heritage chicken to do so! You might be surprised to decide for yourself how "chickeny" chicken can taste!