Putting fat chickens on a diet

[Sussex19]

@raingarden see this post

They all have very prominent keel bones, and yet they are very heavy and, apparently, overweight

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Can't help. I'm terrible at judging by keel, I take mine apart to get a general sense of flock condition. Not a practical option for most.

 

[NatJ]

Can't help. I'm terrible at judging by keel, I take mine apart to get a general sense of flock condition. Not a practical option for most.

Have you noticed if there is any correlation between how the keel feels and how much fat you find inside at butchering? Female-specific information would be especially useful, because laying hens are the ones people are usually most concerned about (vs. young growing cockerels.)

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Have you noticed if there is any correlation between how the keel feels and how much fat you find inside at butchering? Female-specific information would be especially useful, because laying hens are the ones people are usually most concerned about (vs. young growing cockerels.)

No, still training myself. I think I commented on a few pictures this past 6 mo or so that I had miss guessed the condition. and I still end up with birds a little on the heavy side and a little light in the same culling, in spite of identical management.

 

[Shadrach]

Healthy effective weight loss generally invloves both diet and excercise.

 

[NorthwoodsChick]

Following.
I have two niederrhieners that appear fat but legs are so short that they waddle like ducks. I’ve renamed them Diabeto and Diabety. I’m not meaning to be offensive to anyone by that, btw. The niederrheiner with normal length legs is 9 lbs (typical), and the other two are 8 lbs. they free range.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Thank you. But, if the keel bone does not indicate whether or not a bird is fat, then why do we persist in using it as the primary indicator? So, what does it mean to be "fat"? Maybe the whole keel bone thing should be abandoned in favor of something else.

We seem to make the same mistake with people. In humans, modern medicine uses the Body Mass Index which is just the individual's weight divided by height.. It is widely used by doctors in spite of known deficiencies in that it does not differentiate between body fat and muscle mass. Likewise, the keel bone test is measuring breast meat muscle mass and does not consider fat accumulations under the skin.

Whatever means we use to measure fatness, the solution might be the same.... diet and exercise. How would a chicken do on a Keto Diet?

Partially, I suspect its due to a lack of superior options. At least with humans, we now have tests involving electricity which help differentiate between muscle and fat, while sonograms and the like can be used to look at areas of specific fat accumulation. BMI is simply lazy (but has substantial governmental and institutional inertia)

Chickens, on the other hand, accumulate dangerous levels of fat around the internal organs, where we can't check. The ammounts they deposit ath thigh, keel bone, etc aren't in any way dangerous to them, and imperfect as they are, are used as crude analogs for what we want to measure. But its highly subjective, and requires training on the part of the tester. Visual checks, I think we all would agree, are nearly useless. Weight? Too much variation, no "one answer for all chickens".

That leaves us with keel condition checks - barely better than random guesses, but superior to the other alternatives. and actually useful to some trained few.

 

[NatJ]

the keel bone test is measuring breast meat muscle mass and does not consider fat accumulations under the skin.

if the keel bone does not indicate whether or not a bird is fat, then why do we persist in using it as the primary indicator?

I expect the main reason is that people can feel the keel bone on a live chicken, but they cannot easily check how much abdominal fat until the chicken is dead.

Keel bone is probably an acceptable indicator of being underweight. A chicken that has lost muscle mass is almost certainly not getting enough food.

The keel bone test is used to evaluate the breeding stock for Cornish Cross meat chicks, where the parent stock must have their feed limited to keep them small enough to reproduce effectively. For those, the goal really is to limit muscle mass as well as fat (because the large amount of muscle that is "normal" for those birds causes problems in the parent breeding stock.)

But to evaluate normal-shaped chickens (not Cornish Cross), to decide whether they are too fat, I doubt it does any good.

I have several times seen posts by people who want to help their layer-breed hens gain weight, because the keel bone test was showing them as "too skinny" (but that kind of hen will never have much breast muscle, no matter how much abdominal fat they gain.) In that case, the keel bone test may be doing actual harm, because someone tries to make a chicken gain weight beyond what is healthy for it.

 

[janiedoe]

I think @Shadrach gave the best answer.
If you are feeding them a good quality food, add some activities. I'm not saying you need to free-range, but maybe add some roosts and some differnet levels to your run, add a net covered pen and give them access for an hour or so a day. Make some grass frames and rotate them.

 

[ColtHandorf]

But, if the keel bone does not indicate whether or not a bird is fat, then why do we persist in using it as the primary indicator? So, what does it mean to be "fat"? Maybe the whole keel bone thing should be abandoned in favor of something else.

For the same reason, I see idiots in feed stores dangling chicks by their feet or heads to see what they do because that's how grandpappy told them to sex chicks. Or people continue to say DE rids birds of internal parasites. lol