Ok so we went to a local farmers market to buy some Cornish crosses that we're raised in more of the manner that we would raise them to see what we thought of the taste ect. They were about $3 a pound which I did not feel was a terrible price for what we were getting. So we put one in the crockpot yesterday and cooked it up and took all the meat off to put in a casserole. My husband put it in the scale and we got 14oz of meat for our $9. Is that norma? Is there usually that little meat when you don't pump them up on hormones etc? That is cost prohibitive for my family. If that is normal then it makes me wonder if it will be cost effective at all to raise any of them. I am more concerned about the health benefits of eating our own birds but admittedly our resources are limited in the financial department. So I am looking to see if we got a bad batch of birds or if typically birds that way around 3 pounds only have less than 1 pound of meat...
you can't save your cake... and eat it too. You're paying extra to keep it 'healthy', which means that it's not a 'commercially' grown type bird. Your story, is nothing different than people eating organic-- you're buying a label. A label that says that meat is grown locally, sustainably, organically, or grassfed (or a combo of them). Quite simpily, it boils down to this... That type of product takes more work, and so it will require a higher price... With regards to how much meat a 3 lb chicken will produce? You can't expect to get much meat off of a bird of that size... More than likely, 3 lb is about how much you'd get off a DP type bird-- truth be told.. they don't have much meat on them. Now, there are people who are growing the CX birds, locally, sustainably, organically, or grassfed (or a combo of them) with sucess. However, you're going to end up paying about twice as much as what they'd be worth at the store- for obviously no more meat... No, I'm not suprised that you paid $9. for less than a lb of pure chicken meat-- that's how people who sell at most flea markets and farmer's deals make money...
For only a 3 pound bird, that amount of meat sounds a little low to me. You said you didn't know if it would be worth it to raise your own, but you have to remember you won't be forking out $9 to raise a 3 pound bird. FYI - It has been illegal for quite some time to put hormones in chicken feed. I know you see "no hormones" on labels these days, but it's just a marketing thing.
bigredfeather is right - you wouldn't be paying that yourself. You have to remember, these people were out to turn a profit by selling their product (nothing wrong with that at all, just calling it how I see it) - so mark up is natural as that is how a retail business stays in business. If they sell everything at cost, they don't profit right? If it cost them $6 (a guess) to raise a 3 lb bird, they would have charged you $9 so they made some money...most people don't sell things at or below cost unless they have to in order to make room for more product (like the clearance rack at a store). They were out to make money - You gotta keep that in mind too. It's part of the cost you paid, because you didn't just pay by the pound for them to raise that chicken, you also paid by the pound for their hours working at it.
I've never weighed cooked meat before. If I buy the cheapest hamburger, I doubt it weighs 1/2 of what it did raw. You need to compare apples to apples. You need to buy a Tyson store bought whole chicken, crock pot it and weigh the meat from it after it is cooked.
To find out how much meat you got, you need top weigh the raw meat. Scrape it all off the bone, every molecule and weigh it raw. Meat shrinks as it cooks and it gives off a lot of moisture. Did you also weigh the broth and account for evaporation? Perhaps it would give you an approximation to clean the bones up completely, not a molecule left on them and weigh them and deduct from the total fresh weigh of the bird. That would at least be closer to the figure for the amount of meat you received. Of course, you could compare the cost to boneless skinless cooked chicken meat. Maybe from the deli? That's nothing like the price of raw chicken.
Ok, sorry for all the confusion on this one. I TOTALLY understand them making a profit! I totally expected that! I was just surprised at the cost and when I did calculations it seemed off. For example, if I pay $1.91 for the chick then figure in the food, etc. and then only got less than a pound of meat off the bird it seemed to me like it was not going to save me any money at all to do this myself. I might as well keep paying the $3 a pound to this person... Now, I do think comparing it to tyson is not a bad idea and I did not think of weighing it before cooking because I was using the cooking process to make it so the meat would come off the bone easier. I just know when I buy the pre-roasted ones at bjs or sams club they can feed my family two nights. This one barely made it one night.
It also depends how large you grow that bird - If you figure in $2 alone to buy a chick and only take it to 2 lbs dressed - then that alone is $1/lb you spent on the purchase of said chick - not including feed...BUT if you hold out to 4lbs dressed...than it drops to 50cents/lb cost of the chick not including feed...see what I'm saying? How big you grow them makes a difference in what you pay per pound as well... It sounds like you bought a 3lb chicken...but the ones you buy already cooked at Sams are usually a little bigger - and that does make a TON of difference too...plus, remember, that profit thing...their profit by selling to you could instead be your savings by doing it yourself. I view what i do for myself as saving money over buying organic. I go for the 'nearly natural' route with things, but I don't buy organic feed because of it's cost and I do medicate when need be. But I consider what I produce here at the house close enough to organic that I use that as my comparison in my own head at least. It's probably cheaper to buy huge amounts of meat when places here do their summer sales and everything is marked way down - but my stuff LIVES BETTER and that makes a world of difference to me, plus organic meats are never marked down enough to compare with what I can produce on my own price wise...for us since we do so much on a small scale, it will never be about saving money or even making money so much as it is about the end product and how we got to it. Meat chickens...they're like a VISA commercial...you add up what you spent but the end result is without a price for some
It seems most people on here grow their Cornish X closer to 5 pounds dressed. From what I have read here, they pack alot of meat on in that last couple of weeks. If you only got a 3 pound chicken, you may have one that has grown the structure (the bones) but not filled out on muscle yet.
