mich9510
Songster
Nope. If a hen is fed a certain way all their lives, though, they will often take on the flavor of that feed and also of the conditions in which they are kept...in other words, they will often taste strongly of corn and poop.And that's pretty typical of chickens fed formulated feeds and kept in a coop and run situation...they even smell bad when wet, so when you dip them in hot water to pluck them you'll smell it then. Then their poop and guts smell pretty bad too. Then, when you cook them, you can smell that essence coming out of the meat too.....country folk just get used to that smell and taste if that's the way their folks always raised chickens, but others will call it a "gamey" flavor or smell. Their eggs will have that sort of flavor too....sort of an off flavor of excess sulfur(that "eggy" smell and flavor), corn, barnyard.
Usually a hen's eggs and meat will taste pretty much like how they are raised. Commercial eggs taste of stale, blandness and excess eggy/sulfur. Free range chicken's eggs will taste somewhat better, especially if foraged feeds is their primary nutrition and formulated feeds is only the supplement. Free range chickens supplemented with FF are a whole next level of purity and cleanness of flavor, as the FF changes the corn/grain base of the feed to something else entirely, the poop no longer has that strong, excessively foul odor, the eggs no longer taste of anything but a sweet, nutty flavor with no sulfur smell or flavors, the meat has no barnyard smell or flavor when cooked and even the guts don't have a bad smell when you are eviscerating the bird.
So...when I obtained retired hens from a cooped situation that had done nothing but walk on their own poop and eat formulated feed all their lives, that smell never really left their bodies, tainting their eggs and meat also. I kept them for a 2-3 wks, feeding them FF to see if I could clean up that flavor but it didn't happen. Even the two birds I kept that were still laying, after I had killed all the others, and fed on FF for weeks after that, were laying eggs that had that off flavor....those went to the dogs.
That's why I always sort of give a chuckle when people talk about their "farm fresh eggs" they produced in their backyard coop and run situations, as they fed the same feeds the commercial birds eat, gave the same medicated feeds to the chicks, gave the same dewormers and antibiotics the commercial chickens get. Basically, they paid a ton of money to produce the same thing they could have gotten for cheap at the store, only their eggs are a tad fresher.
My chickens are free range and I have supplemented with FF since the day they were born. My (live) chickens have an almost sweet smell to them. I noticed when I pick them up I actually like to hold them close to my face. Their feathers are so soft on my face and they smell good. The same with my ducks...even after they've been noodling around an the mud...lol. everyone I tell I have chickens asks me "don't they stink?"
The answer is no and a big reason is because of the FF. The eggs don't have that sulfur taste/smell and the meat is delicious!
