Official BYC Poll: What Is Your Perspective On Chickens For Meat

[JacinLarkwell]

I started raising chickens because I wanted to taste REAL chicken, not 8-week-old Franken-chicks that would die of heart attacks if they weren't butchered by nine weeks.

Those chicks aren't sustainable. If civilization collapses (and history has shown that it eventually does, sometimes suddenly), those genetically engineered birds will cease to exist.

For thousands of years, humans have been raising and breeding chickens for eggs, meat, beauty, and even companionship. And now that long history of humans with chickens is at risk because the Franken-chicken is fast and cheap.

But they don't live long enough to lay their own eggs.

Have you ever asked yourselves why you can only buy meat chicks as day-old chicks?

I strongly suspect that the answer is, those day old chicks don't hatch from actual eggs, the kind that have shells. I suspect they all incubate in laboratory conditions, factory style, dumped out of their plastic egg sacks when mature, rinsed off and air dried, then inspected and culled for abnormalities before being boxed and shipped off to farmers and retailers.

I grow REAL chickens, and when my flock is big enough that is the only kind of chicken I will want to eat.

Sure, I have a few I name. I probably won't eat the individual hens who have become pets.

But you know, chickens are delicious. Every predator knows this. So it's not really a matter of WILL they be eaten... but WHO will eat them.

If given a choice, I'd bet that the chickens would prefer to be eaten by someone who feeds and waters and protects them, who incubated their eggs and ensures that their family lives on even though individual chickens have to die. That seems like a much better deal than being eaten by any old wild animal, who may just slaughter the entire flock and leave their carcasses to rot.

Many heritage meat breeds are becoming rare and even endangered because farmers can no longer afford to raise them in competition with cheap Franken-chicken. This is a tragedy that should be prevented.

So yes, I DO eat my own chickens. Eating them is the whole point!

You can buy Cornishx eggs if you look enough

 

[Offshoreorca]

I'm surprised there isn't an option on the poll that reads, "I eat chicken, but only my own". That's the category that I fall under. I don't have much meat in my diet (it's my partner who isn't ready to give it up yet), so we eat our own that we raised as we know the living standards and quality of life they have before being processed. It started off with spare cockerels from raising chicks and we are now getting into raising Bresse as a good duel purpose chicken to supply meat and supplement the eggs we get from our laying flock.

 

[chickengr]

I started raising chickens because I wanted to taste REAL chicken, not 8-week-old Franken-chicks that would die of heart attacks if they weren't butchered by nine weeks.

Those Franken-chicks aren't sustainable. If civilization collapses (and history has shown that it eventually does, sometimes suddenly), those genetically engineered birds will cease to exist.

For thousands of years, humans have been raising and breeding chickens for eggs, meat, beauty, and even companionship. And now that long history of humans with chickens is at risk because the Franken-chicken is fast and cheap.

But Franken-chickens don't live long enough to lay their own eggs.

Have you ever asked yourselves why you can only buy Cornish Cross meat birds as day-old chicks?

I strongly suspect that the answer is, those day old chicks don't hatch from actual eggs, the kind that have shells. I suspect they all incubate in laboratory conditions, factory style, dumped out of their plastic egg sacks when mature, rinsed off and air dried, then inspected and culled for abnormalities before being boxed and shipped off to farmers and retailers.

I grow REAL chickens, and when my flock is big enough that is the only kind of chicken I will want to eat.

Sure, I have a few I name. I probably won't eat the individual hens who have become pets.

But you know, chickens are delicious. Every predator knows this. So it's not really a matter of WILL they be eaten... but WHO will eat them.

If given a choice, I'd bet that the chickens would prefer to be eaten by someone who feeds and waters and protects them, who incubated their eggs and ensures that their family lives on even though individual chickens have to die. That seems like a much better deal than being eaten by any old wild animal, who may just slaughter the entire flock and leave their carcasses to rot.

Many heritage meat breeds are becoming rare and even endangered because farmers can no longer afford to raise them in competition with cheap Franken-chicken. This is a tragedy that should be prevented.

So yes, I DO eat my own chickens. Eating them is the whole point!

talking about franken-chickens - as you call them: a few days ago a friend of mine butchered 2 of them that happened to be about 4 mo. they did not have any sign of eggs

 

[3KillerBs]

Have you ever asked yourselves why you can only buy Cornish Cross meat birds as day-old chicks?

No, I've never asked myself that because, having lived in several places where chickens are raised and known commercial chicken farmers, I know for a fact that Cornish X chickens are a terminal cross of specially bred, proprietary lines that the breeding companies do not release to the public in order to protect their investment of decades of time and millions of dollars in creating the most efficient feed-to-meat-converters ever to exist on the planet.

For all the virtues of heritage breed chickens -- and those virtues are numerous -- there is no escaping the fact that before the creation of the Cornish X a chicken dinner was a treat for special occasions rather than an inexpensive staple food.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

talking about franken-chickens - as you call them: a few days ago a friend of mine butchered 2 of them that happened to be about 4 mo. they did not have any sign of eggs

I've never seen eggs in any 4 month necropsies to be fair

 

[Molpet]

I've never seen eggs in any 4 month necropsies to be fair

Several of us have kept a CX pullet and hatched her eggs

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Several of us have kept a CX pullet and hatched her eggs

I'm not saying you can't

 

[parvani]

Several of us have kept a CX pullet and hatched her eggs

That doesn't negate the fact that CX birds are genetically engineered to have small hearts so they don't move around much and "waste" the farmer's investment in feed. If her heart was big enough to keep her alive that long, she was an anomaly, not the standard.

They aren't designed to live.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I strongly suspect that the answer is, those day old chicks don't hatch from actual eggs, the kind that have shells.

If you want a taste of reality you can follow these links. Your choice.

 

[Molpet]

That doesn't negate the fact that CX birds are genetically engineered to have small hearts so they don't move around much and "waste" the farmer's investment in feed. If her heart was big enough to keep her alive that long, she was an anomaly, not the standard.

They aren't designed to live.

The term is selective breeding. No genes were engineered.
Yes it's a challenge.... to keep them alive long enough to breed strict even with diet and exercise, don't breed true because they are a 4 way hybrid, and the adult males breast gets in the way.