fast food chicken, never again for me.....

[cassie]

8 weeks is what it takes for a Cornish Cross to reach butcher weight when fed on a good healthy diet of grain made for poultry. The chickens that are going to the fast food restaurant are not eating anything strange. No hormones, no weird magic to made them grow. They are simply genetically programed to grow fast.

If you raise your own and you raise Cornish Cross and take good care of them, your home raised chickens will be ready to butcher at 8 weeks, also. However, if you raise them with some exercise, fresh air, and a bit of forage, your fast growing chickens will taste better than the ones raised in cages.

Right on all counts, except meat chickens are not raised in cages in commercial operations. There is no reason to do so and it would be very expensive.

 

[Erica]

Actually they are fed something weird... artificial methionine (a building block of protein) made using propane. It's in most chicken feeds, but at higher doses in the meat bird feed.

Not saying this is necessarily terrible (though there are possible consequences in terms of fatty liver), but it's the basis of the chicken industry, and worth knowing more about.

Birds raised at home usually have grass and other foods so they generally eat less of the artificial stuff, and have better flavor. Whichever way you look at it that's better, I reckon.

cheers
Erica

 

[what did I do]

I wish I could get my wife and daughter to think that way! they now count chickens whenever we eat chickens in order to make sure none of ours are missing!

you could get a few meat birds, they would never miss them if they didn't see them being processed.

 

[TNBEARCHICK]

Well we just processed our first 2 birds, the whole family form my 5 year old(didn't do much but point and lol) all the way up to me and my wife. We had a good time my 10 year old had some tears but then was ok. They looked great in the sink for final cleaning, great in the fridge and will be better in the oven.