Does hormone feed affect next generation of chicks?

[MasAhora]

I have 9 chicks around 7 weeks I bought for meat/dual purpose, hoping to eat a few and breed the rest into my layer flock.
My friend says their skin will taste different when cooked (he can taste the difference between store bought and home raised).
The difference he says is the parents of the chicks were fed hormones. I thought it was more about genetics, of the 9 there are 3 distinct growth rates depending on their colour and their shapes are forming differently.
I am raising them on hormone free food (I HOPE) but curious if the parentage hormone feed affects the chicks.

 

[Pyxis]

Hormone usage is actually banned in the production of chicken, so that's not what's causing a taste difference. Not sure what it is that's causing the taste difference; could be the diet. Store bought chickens never get to free range or even touch the ground and their diet is very different than those that are raised in small backyard flocks.

 

[MasAhora]

Interesting. However this is Paraguay, I'd never rule out additives that may be banned in say the USA or Australia.
I do know many years ago in Latin America young children were developing breasts from hormone laden chickens. What type of hormone it was IDK but apparently it was banned.
So in the event a hen and rooster are fed hormones, I'm wondering if it would affect the next generation?
Purely curiosity as I will keep and try to cross breed these chicks...I don't have an alternative at this stage

 

[Pyxis]

Sorry, didn't realize you were in Paraguay! Not sure what the rules are there. I'm also not sure if hormones would pass to the next generation, maybe someone else will know.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I have 9 chicks around 7 weeks I bought for meat/dual purpose, hoping to eat a few and breed the rest into my layer flock.
My friend says their skin will taste different when cooked (he can taste the difference between store bought and home raised).
The difference he says is the parents of the chicks were fed hormones. I thought it was more about genetics, of the 9 there are 3 distinct growth rates depending on their colour and their shapes are forming differently.
I am raising them on hormone free food (I HOPE) but curious if the parentage hormone feed affects the chicks.

It is highly likely that you have 3 or more "breeds" or strains of chickens. I don't read and write Paraguayan but I also highly doubt that your local feed mill is selling drug laced feed. I highly think that you are noticing the difference in the fat content and tenderness of the meat.

i do not recommend that you cross meat birds into a laying flock. You will not get plump fat tender birds that lay buckets of eggs a day.

However you will likely end up with a flock of tough, stringy, chickens that lay few eggs but eat truck loads of feed doing it.

I know that Paraguay is not a language.

 

[MasAhora]

It is highly likely that you have 3 or more "breeds" or strains of chickens. I don't read and write Paraguayan but I also highly doubt that your local feed mill is selling drug laced feed. I highly think that you are noticing the difference in the fat content and tenderness of the meat.

i do not recommend that you cross meat birds into a laying flock. You will not get plump fat tender birds that lay buckets of eggs a day.

However you will likely end up with a flock of tough, stringy, chickens that lay few eggs but eat truck loads of feed doing it.

I know that Paraguay is not a language.

Nooooooo... I don't want a flock of tough, stringy chickens that eat me out of house and home and don't deliver eggs but poop like crazy and follow me around like a squeaky swarm

I do like the one little naked neck chick that is part of the group.... don't think I'll eat that one, it's smart and funny.
I think the feed I buy is fine but get mixed messages so who knows, I just do not have enough experience with chickens or time in my new country yet so BYC is wonderful for random questions and advice and hours of old threads to rummage through.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Different countries, different rules for sure. Growth hormones were banned in chickens in the USA in the late 1950’s. They were not necessary due to selective breeding and they are not practical. They are still allowed in other animals but not chickens.

Feeding growth hormones does not work, they have to be injected. If they are eaten the digestive process destroys the hormones before they are adsorbed by the body. Next time someone tells you growth hormones are used in chickens think about someone paying good money for a human’s salary to go around injecting an expensive product into thousands of chickens that does no good. To me this kind of fails the common sense test. Other animals, such as beef, are different, they often do inject hormones, but not chickens.

Again, I know you are in a different country and they may do things differently, but here there are extremely simple reasons store chicken tastes different from the chickens you raise, especially dual purpose chickens. The store chickens are the hybrid broilers developed by selective breeding to be butchered around 6 to 8 weeks of age. Our chickens are normally much older when they are butchered because they take so much longer to reach butcher age. Baby animals are tenderer and generally blander tasting than older animals. They are going to taste different and have different textures, not because of hormones but because of age.

There may be another factor. Much of the chicken sold in the stores here is injected with brine. Brine is a salt water mixture, but I don’t know what other spices, flavors, or anything else might be in the brine they use. Some people that butcher their own chickens brine them, I don’t. But if you add things that affect the flavor of chickens, it stands to reason they may taste differently.

For thousands of years people have been keeping chickens for meat and/or eggs. Some flocks that specialize in meat have been developed, some specialize in eggs. But farmers and people in town often kept flocks for both. A lot of the time these were flocks that pretty much fed themselves in good weather by foraging, hatched and raised chicks, laid eggs for the family, and provided meat for the table. Since they often foraged for their food instead being fed a rich diet, they were often not all that big, they seemed to have a lot of “game” chicken in them.

I grew up on one of those farms. We ate a lot of eggs and Mom could turn one of those scrawny stringy chickens into some really good eating and feed a family with five kids off of one of them. If she fried it, the breading and gravy helped stretch the meat plus she put pieces like neck, back, gizzard, and liver on the platter. Chicken and dumplings was a way to stretch a chicken and make real comfort food out of an old chicken. Older chicken needs to be cooked in a way to match its age. The older it is the slower and with more moisture it needs to be coked to avoid it being touch as leather.

There certainly is a difference in how my chicken tastes and how store chicken tastes. Texture can vary too. Some people can’t handle those differences, I prefer mine.

I forgot to mention. Here in the USA for a chicken to be “certified organic” it does not matter what the parents ate. The only thing that matters is what the chick eats after it hatches. Plants are different, the plant the seeds comes from has to be organic. But that is not the case with animals.

 

[MasAhora]

Great info! Thanks