I've read some of the bresse chicken threads. I'm gonna guess taste difference between chickens is usually due to management differences...like food, housing, etc. Not because one type of chicken is inherently more tasty than another. Following the bresse protocol, aren't the birds pastured for a certain amount of time, and then caged and feed a diet of milk and grains? I'm sure that affects taste...kinda like the pampered kobe cattle routine? Probably not the bird, but the management of the bird-- though certainly, you can't get that kind of meat out of a leghorn, haha!
Taking a cue from the bresse technique, just last week did mix in a bit of cream into every evening feed for my meaties for a week before I slaughtered one. Happened to be the best CX yet. Two more CX and 7 brahmas to go. I think I will continue to mix in dairy in one feed per day for a week or two before butcher. The brahmas (these were the packing peanuts that came with my CX order) are ridiculous, as far as meat birds go. The feed they'll go through before they are ready to butcher--I could raise 2 more batches of 10 CX in that time for the same amount of feed. Oh well, lesson learned. I'll have to find something else to do with peanuts (give them away?), if I raise more CX in the fall. Can I request the hatchery NOT to send peanuts?
I posted a few days ago that my EE was egg-bound. I guess she wasn't. Still no eggs from her--she'd been laying almost daily for a few weeks--but whatever it was, she's back to normal--minus the daily egg.
It's time for the little polish/silkie bantam to get integrated back into the layer coop, but the layers are horrible to her. She wasn't pecked on before she left to raise these meaties, but it's downright nasty what they are doing to her now. They go out of their way to chase her down.
