Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (92 page)

Despite these necessary precautions, take heart from the fact that a chicken rarely picks up disease at a show. Most people who exhibit their birds take great pride in keeping them healthy.

If you enter enough shows and bring home enough ribbons, eventually you may become a Master Exhibitor. Both the American Bantam Association and the American Poultry Association have Master Exhibitor programs, although they use different systems for establishing the honor.

The ABA offers additional awards for Master Breeder and Citation of Merit, while the APA offers Grand Master Exhibitor and a Hall of Fame award. Some of these honors encourage specialization in a single variety, and qualifying for any of them requires years of dedication.

A bird exhibited in such fine condition as this Sumatra cock is a testament to the skill and dedication of its owner.

IF THE IDEA OF RAISING
your feathered friends for meat doesn’t appeal to you, read no further. But if you are among the many folks for whom an important reason to keep chickens is for their clean, healthful and delicious meat, read on. Of all the different forms of livestock, chickens can put meat on your table with the least amount of time and effort. In a matter of weeks, your chicken-keeping chores are over, and your freezer is full of poultry that’s tastier and better for you than anything you could buy at the store.

When it comes to raising chickens for meat, you have two basic choices. You can produce a commercially developed Cornish-cross strain or you can raise one of the old-fashioned heavy or dual-purpose utility breeds.

Cornish-cross broilers
have the advantage of being interested in only one thing — eating. Since all they do is eat, they grow fast and tender. But this characteristic also makes them coop potatoes. When they’re not eating, they have nothing to do but sit around getting sick and dying, or developing bad habits, like picking on each other.

And because they were developed to be raised in climate-controlled housing, they don’t actively forage and won’t do at all well outdoors when the weather is extremely hot or cold. Managing these hybrids therefore requires careful attention, but at least the homegrown result is better than the store-bought version.

Old-fashioned meat
or
utility breeds
are hardier than commercial-strain broilers, but they grow much slower. Where a commercial broiler reaches 5 pounds (2.25 kg) in 6 to 7 weeks, a purebred meat breed takes 9 or 10 weeks to reach the same weight, and a utility breed takes 12 to 16 weeks. The old-fashioned breed
offers more flexibility in butchering age and, unlike the Cornish cross, does not grow uniformly, so not all the birds of the same age will be ready to butcher at the same time. Cornish cross, on the other hand,
must
be butchered when they reach broiler weight or they will get too big too fast and develop bone ailments or heart failure.

Compared to a commercial hybrid strain, the meat of a purebred strain is lower in fat, firmer in texture, and juicier; has thinner breasts and more dark meat; and has a stronger chicken flavor, thanks to its older age. According to some reports, the longer growing period also makes the meat more nutritious, because it has more time to develop complex amino acids.

Some people describe nonhybrid meat as tough and suitable only for slow, moist cooking. I couldn’t agree less. After years of enjoying the meat of dual-purpose birds cooked in all the same ways as store-bought meat, I find the latter has a bland taste and an unnatural mushy texture. Old-time American utility breeds with the greatest potential for meat production are the Delaware, New Hampshire, Plymouth Rock, and Wyandotte.

We raise meat birds as a by-product of keeping layers. Each spring we hatch a batch of dual-purpose chicks to get replacement pullets. When the pullets are big enough to go out on range, we separate them and confine the surplus cockerels until they reach fryer size. Later, any pullet that doesn’t measure up is culled as a roaster. When the pullets start laying, our old layers become stewing hens.

The idea of raising meat birds as a by-product of the laying flock is far from new. It is, in fact, how today’s broiler industry got started in the first place. In the 1920s many housewives like Mrs. Wilmer Steele of Ocean View, Delaware, purchased chicks every year to raise as layer replacements. One year Mrs. Steele mistakenly received 500 chicks instead of the 50 she had ordered, so she raised the surplus for meat and sold them at a dandy profit. The next year she bought 1,000 chicks, and again the money rolled in. When Mr. Steele’s wife had worked her way up to 25,000 chicks a year, he retired from the Coast Guard to stay home and help. For years thereafter Delaware was the center of the broiler industry and development of efficient meat strains.

The class of poultry meat you prefer may influence your choice between hybrids and nonhybrids. Meat birds are divided into these basic classes:

Rock-Cornish game hen
— Not a game bird at all and not necessarily a hen, but a Cornish, Rock-Cornish, or any Cornish-cross bird weighing between 1 and 2 pounds (0.5 to 1 kg). To get plump, round game hens, you must raise Cornish
hybrids, although I’ve grown surplus bantam cockerels into respectable single-serving birds.

Broiler-fryer
— A young, tender bird of either sex weighing between 2½ and 4½ pounds (1 and 2 kg) dressed. The skin is soft, pliable, and smooth textured; the breastbone is flexible; and the meat is tender enough for any method of cooking. Hybrids and nonhybrids alike make good broiler-fryers, although a hybrid reaches target weight in about half the time of a nonhybrid. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines a broiler-fryer as being “about 7 weeks old.”

Roaster
— A young tender bird of either sex, usually weighing 5 to 7 pounds (2.25 to 3.2 kg) dressed. The skin is soft, pliable, and smooth textured, but the breastbone is less flexible than a broiler-fryer’s. This bird is usually roasted whole. Because of the hybrid broiler’s voracious appetite beyond the fryer stage, and the ensuing health issues, nonhybrids are more economical to raise as roasters but will be a little smaller, in the 4- to 6-pound (2 to 2.5 kg) range, and may take longer to get there. The USDA defines a roaster as being “about 3 to 5 months old.”

Stewing or baking hen
— A mature (10 months or older) female chicken with less-tender meat than a broiler or roaster and a nonflexible breastbone, requiring use of moist cooking methods such as stewing, braising, or pressure cooking. Stewing hens are generally older laying hens that are no longer economically productive.

Cock or rooster
— Any male chicken that has entered the stag stage, when the comb and spurs develop, the skin becomes coarse, and the meat turns dark, tough, strong tasting, and generally not fit to eat, although with long, moist cooking, it may be rendered tender enough to chew.

Before highly specialized, fast-growing broiler hybrids were developed, meat birds were nothing more than cockerels from a batch of straight-run chicks raised to get pullets for laying. Those of us who keep dual-purpose flocks still raise meat birds the old-fashioned way. Due to the slow growth of nonhybrids, we have to take care to butcher cockerels before they reach the stag stage, when the meat gets strong tasting and tough.

In the old days, before the development of modern hybrids, such cockerels were caponized, meaning their testicles were surgically removed to channel their energy into continued growth rather than sexual maturity. A capon grows to the size of a small turkey and was once considered an alternative to the holiday
gobbler, only much easier to grow — turkeys being notorious for sitting around thinking up ways to die.

Compared to an intact cockerel (left), a capon remains calmer, grows larger, and rarely crows.

The hackle, saddle, and tail feathers of a capon grow longer than those of a cockerel, but instead of developing a large comb, the capon keeps the cockerel’s small, pale head. The capon has a calmer disposition than a cockerel and rarely crows. He gains weight at about the same rate as a cockerel to about 18 weeks of age; then his growth rate surpasses that of a cockerel.

The capon is more expensive to raise than a cockerel, since he isn’t properly grown and finished until he’s at least 20 weeks old, and the heavier capon is more susceptible to weak legs and breast blister (a blister caused by the pressure of resting all that weight against the breastbone). For these and other reasons, few people bother caponizing these days.

Many fine meat breeds never caught on in the United States simply because of the color of their skin. The skin color of a meat bird is a matter of preference, and consumers generally prefer what they’ve been taught to like. As a general rule, European consumers favor white-skinned breeds, Asians like black-skinned breeds, and Americans prefer yellow-skinned breeds. The hybrids developed for meat production in this country have yellow skin.

Even within a single breed, skin color varies with the chickens’ diet. Marigolds, for instance, are sometimes fed to hens to make their egg yolks a richer yellow and will also deepen the color of the skin. A yellow-skinned bird that isn’t feeling well, or for some other reason isn’t eating well, will have paler skin than its flockmates. A young chicken with little fat may have bluish-looking skin.

SKINCOLORBYBREED

In North America, birds with white plumage are preferred for meat because they look cleaner when plucked than dark-feathered birds. Regardless of feather or skin color, the taste is pretty much the same. Since many people now remove the skin before cooking or serving chicken, preferences in feather and skin color have become less important than they once were.

The breed you raise will, to some extent, determine how you manage your meat birds. Or your chicken-managing practices will determine the most suitable breed for your purpose. Methods for managing broilers fall into three basic categories: