Eating heirloom chickens
The final chicken topic we
spent a lot of time experimenting with in 2012 was raising heirloom
chickens as meat birds. We continued learning how to cook
heirloom chickens to
highlight their extra flavor while dealing with more chewiness than
you'll find in a grocery store bird, and we also got more sophisticated
in our
methods of eating up tough old hens. (The trick is slow,
moist heat.)
In fact, we got so good
at eating homegrown chickens that we ran out in October --- I can't
wait for our last set of broilers to hit their Thanksgiving kill
date! I chose to part
out all 28 broilers
we grew this spring and 
summer so I could cook their
carcasses into stock to form the base of a winter's worth of
soups. So we haven't consumed all that chicken goodness yet, but
I don't want to dip into our soup stash until we really need to.
As you can see from the
photo to the right, our broilers produced extremely rich broth.
Part of the reason for the bright color is that I let our meat birds
have access to unlimited feed this year, which means my
feed conversion rate
was worse than last year, but the birds grew bigger during their three
month growth window.
My
goal in taking a less managed approach to feed was to lower my stress,
but I think it was worth it. Fat from pastured poultry is full of
omega-3s that keep my familial tendency toward depression at bay, and I
really did feel happier this year eating all those fatty
chickens. Although my eventual goal is still to lower our
dependency on storebought feed, I think continuing to diversify our
pastures and work toward growing
more of our own feed
is better than walking
the tightrope to keep chicks nourished while restricting their intake. Preventing
spilled feed will
also help decrease feed costs.
Another avenue I want to
explore is variety selection. We gave away our Light
Sussex last year
because they were just too
friendly, which
means they spent less time foraging and more time hanging around
waiting for handouts. Our Black
Australorps are
good, hard workers, but they don't grow quite as fast as our Australorp
X Marans hybrids, and they aren't laying as well as the Golden Comets
I remember so fondly. We picked up three new Rhode
Island Reds this
fall and I'm looking forward to seeing what their genes do to our mutt
flock.
Experiments aside, it
definitely feels good to be producing nearly all of our own chicken
meat on-farm starting with eggs laid by our hens and fertilized by our
rooster. Plus, it's delicious!
| This post is part of our 2012 Chicken Experiments lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries: |
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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There are two ways to get your chickens' omega balance right. One is to supplement their feed with omega-3 (flax or fishmeal).
The other option is to feed them supplemental food that has low omega-6. Since the problem is the 3-6 balance, you don't need to give them extra omega-3 if their omega-6 is low to begin with. This probably means formulating your own feed. I think barley is supposed to be low in omega-6. I’m no expert on chicken feed -- I assume there are a number of options. As long as the feed has calories, the chickens can produce most of the other fats they need (just like us!).