I cut into the breast on the left side of the bird, feeling a little more resistance than expected, flip the meat to the side, and spotted something very unusual. Is that a leaf?
Having just spent a full day slaughtering chickens, I’d reacquainted myself with every part of the bird. The parts that you don’t see in a grocery store were as familiar as the shoelaces on my favorite red sneakers. I’d smelled guts, butts, and that chickeny chickeny smell that you just don’t get from any other animal. One of my favorite (yes, it’s weird to have a “favorite”) part of eviscerating a chicken is opening the crop and the gizzard. I love seeing that the animals raised were eating real food. Finding a bird full of grass, worms, and bugs makes me feel like we’re doing something right. I get used to the sight of Western Buttercup leaves, as I’m splitting open chickens.
Day two, I’m standing over a cutting board breaking down the meat we intend to consume over the next year. Hindquarters in that pile, breasts in that, wings over there, and the carcasses, largely stripped of the big bits of meat go into the stock pot. After a few birds, either eviscerating or butchering, I drop into the rhythm of the work. My hands move more deftly than they’re typically capable. I start to find the tendons and separate the feet from the body in two quick moves, instead of fumbling around. The knife seems to know exactly where to turn at the bottom of the breast meat, just before the ribs. I get confident; a really good feeling for something oft deemed antiquated.
Toward the end of today’s butchery session, something interrupted the flow of my work. There was a little more resistance than usual… then, after I exposed the breast meat… green. GREEN!? How did a leaf get … into the meat? I look closer. As if a play on “Green Eggs and Ham,” this really is a swath of green meat, right in the middle of this broiler’s breast. Cutting down the other side, I see exactly the same thing. Green meat. WHAT… THE… HELL!? Is it spoiled? The birds have spent the night in our freebie fridge on the porch. Did it fail to maintain temperature? Did it rot overnight? Nervous, I take a sniff. Nothing. Not spoiled?! What foul fowl is this?
Washed the hands and took a quick gander at the magical internets and, after reading several alarmist blog comments (“OMG, MY WHOLE FOODS CHICKEN BREASTS ARE ROTTEN!! MY DINNER PARTY IS RUINED!”), I found references to Oregon Muscle Disease. Oregon Muscle Disease, also known as Green Muscle Disease and Deep Pectoral Myopathy, is most commonly found in heavy meat chickens. I was able to find a few descriptions of the condition and one or two that discussed the cause at length:
It has been estimated that, in turkeys and broilers, the supracoracoid increases in weight by about 20% during activity for the huge blood flow into the muscle. The increased size of the muscle is so marked in the heavy breeds that the muscle becomes strangulated and ischemic, because the increased pressure within the muscle occludes the blood vessels and causes a necrosis of the muscle […]. The resultant necrotic muscle has a characteristic hemorrhagic appearance, with a swollen reddish-brown lesion (early developing stage) that later becomes green and shrunken and then pale green (old stage), depending upon the time of induction of the vigorous wing exercise […]
(The Occurrence of Deep Pectoral Myopathy in Roaster Chickens from the journal “Poultry Science”)
These chickens are bred to maximize the size of the breast muscles; American consumers have learned to expect tidy heat-shrink wrapped packages of huge chicken breasts. Producers, processors and retailers are eager to serve the demand with the highest margin cut of the bird. In intensive poultry operations, meat birds are raised in large warehouse-like coops. The birds are kept in almost complete darkness to minimize flight/flapping instincts and the occurrence of deep pectoral myopathy (DPM). Our birds are kept outdoors and on pasture: certainly more likely to flap.
After a few minutes of surfing the poultry information superhighway, I went back to parting out the rest of this years’ meat birds. Left with thoughts of what I’d learned, I reconsidered a question that’s become quite common, since we started the farm… “are we doing the right thing?” We’re raising our own food (plus some for others) and are trying to “do the right thing” in every decision we make. I’ve commented on our decisions to let chickens “behave like chickens” and this years’ flock was most certainly allowed to behave like it wanted. Some of that behavior included… well… flapping and, apparently, some of that flapping led to “strangulation” of the pectoral muscle. While all the research I’ve been able to find states that it “does not appear to affect the general health of the bird,” it can’t be pleasant. So I’m left with a query and a quandary; our decision to raise the chicken we like to eat in the way we think is “right” has resulted in something most decidedly “not right.”
In commercial production, incidence of DPM is as high as 1-2% (higher in “free range” plants) and us Americans buy almost all our meat parted out. Our addiction to ‘boneless skinless chicken breasts’ means that most people are unlikely to ever see bright green chicken meat; processors find it and discard it during deboning. So, given 1 bird of the 33 birds we slaughtered this year had this issue, it’s not surprising that we had one… but does that make it “OK?” Nothing else about commercial chicken production is OK with us, why would this be?
In our quest to provide food for ourselves and those around us, we’ve taken chickens with breasts so big that they’d be well suited for Hollywood and thrown them into the forest to “behave naturally.” It’s a case of doing the right thing with the wrong bird. The Cornish Cross flock from this year (and certainly their Jumbo brethren from last) may just be the wrong birds for us.
If nothing else, this has spurred our interest in finding a heavy meat bird that’s well suited to this environment. We’ve discussed finding a bird that we can sustainably (both meanings of the word) raise in the way that we think is “right.”
Oh, and in case you find green meat in a “free range” roaster, from our farm or another, it isn’t spoiled, it isn’t poisonous or bad to eat… in fact it may actually be more “green” than you’d thought.
We completed this year’s round of meat bird/processing two weekends ago and I’m just now getting around to posting a final “round up”. The key news is that I’ve got Bengt’s agreement to go forward with sales again next year! I can’t do it with out his help!
The other key piece of news is that because of the sales this year I am going to be able to purchase an egg incubator for the farm. This is a significant milestone for both our meat and egg production. This will allow me to narrow in on a non-hybrid meat/egg breed for the future which will ensure that the chicks we raise are treated the best way possible, including the often unwanted male chicks. I’m very excited and starting my research immediately!
So now on to the final round up of this year’s meat sales…
Our first slaughter dates in April were for “fryer” sized chickens at a little over 8 weeks of age. The average weight came in at 3.54lbs per bird which was spot on with the estimates for the breed at 3-4lbs for that age. All of the inspection related processes went swimmingly and we ran in to no problems. We actually found that my very conservative time management estimates were extremely conservative which made for a leisurely pace throughout the actual processing process.
We were a bit surprised to realize that we had more females than males in our “straight run”. This may have factored in to the slightly lower average weight for our second slaughter dates in May which were for “roaster” sized chickens at around 12 weeks of age. Their average weight came in at exactly 6lbs which was a little shy of the 7-9lbs expected for the breed. Our intent had been to slaughter the females in the first round and leave the males for the second round since they are typically a little bit larger. We ended up with slightly more than half of the final batch being females still. We had family and friends out to help for the second date which made the process go much faster and the friendly chatter was a welcome distraction.
Our friends over at F3 decided to process a couple of their standard breed males that were delivered in the same order as our meat birds with the second batch in May. Despite being the exact same age, they weighed in at approximately 2-2.5lbs. We also discovered the unique challenges of trying to pluck clean dark feathered birds. I was surprised at such a significant size difference. Something I certainly need to consider as we try to find a multipurpose standard breed.
The chickens processed on the second slaughter dates included the chickens we had reserved for our own freezer. We are required to sell our chickens whole, but for our own use we part them out and vaccum seal them. They keep extremely well that way. Our intent was for this to be our only source of chicken for the next year, but with loses it was only 9 chickens. We had processed 14 the year before for ourselves and it certainly wasn’t abundant so we will have to see how it goes. Our 9 was part of the 6lb average (whole) which is 54lbs of chicken before parting. The weight doesn’t include the offal (livers, hearts, gizzards, necks, and feet) from our own birds and the ones that customers weren’t interested in. If you assume ½ lb of chicken per serving, 54 lbs means chicken once a week for the two of us for the year. Between both slaughter dates we put away an additional 3 1/2+ pounds of liver. I didn’t even weigh the hearts and gizzards. Necks and feet went immediately in to the stock pots along with the carcasses from our parted chickens. The resulting “demi-glace” was pressure canned and resulted in approximately 2 gallons of concentrated stock. That will actually get us quite far and is a staple for a lot of our favorite “faux” vegetarian dishes such as: Faux Chicken Pho, Chicken and Chive Dumplings, and Chicken Posole.
All in all I’d call this year successful!
We couldn’t have asked for a better weekend to do the bulk of our meat sales this year. It was mild, even if a bit rainy on Saturday, and sunny and gorgeous on Sunday. With our pre-planning of the process and our past experiences the pace I set ended up being quite prudent so things weren’t stressful. We’ve determined we can probably process twice as many birds in the time we had scheduled. We also learned a few more things this time around like the perfect scalding temperature/time as well as the fact that we need to invest in some professional killing cones. The one that we had made ourselves worked okay for the larger “roasting” birds but worked somewhat poorly for the “frying” sized birds. We had a couple instances of dislocated wings during the final death throes because we had to remove the birds from the cone. It doesn’t impact the usefullness of the product but I was not happy with the presentation. I am going to rectify the situation by ordering cones this week.
The Dept of Ag inspector came out on Saturday morning and was quite pleasent to chat with while we got started. I was also quite pleased with the weights on the birds. They came in spot on for what the breed was advertised to produce and I feel pretty good about the supplemental feed to weight conversion. Also when isolating them to the slaughter pen (to keep the ones to be slaughtered off food for about 12 hours before hand) we were able to observe their behavior more closely and I was quite happy with how chicken-like and happy these birds seemed. I still want to research breeds more and try to find a standard breed we like, but these didn’t seem like the franken-chicken of last year.
So now we have another weekend of work in mid-May for the “roasting” weight chickens which also includes the chickens for our family’s yearly consumption as well. I’m not sure I want to do “frying” birds again. They are actually a little harder to handle due to the smaller size and the aren’t any less work to slaughter. It may sound a little weird, but we really do look at a lot of things in the terms of getting the most for the life taken.
Now I need to get focused on the garden again. My peas are just starting to come up and it’s about timet to start transplanting, direct sowing, and succession planting some of the cooler weather vegetables.
Licensing complete! Thanks to the lovely ladies of the Washington State Department of Agriculture. Customer notifications are prepped and we have the tentative schedule. I’ll be sending them out in the next few days. If the weather would only cooperate as well, I’ll be thrilled. One of the ladies is coming back out on our first day of slaughter to check on us, but it sounds like things should go pretty smoothly. I’m so happy!
We are going to raise a limited quantity of pasture-raised, natural, meat birds for on farm sales this year. In order to do so we’d like to approximate interest through tentative pre-orders. There are a lot of unknowns at this point, including final weights, ratio of “Fryers” to “Roasters”, etc.
Our meat birds are treated the same as our laying hens. They will spend a maximum of 4 weeks in a brooding environment (heated and protected) and then spend their remaining time ranging and receiving supplemental growing feed. They are not medicated or treated with antibiotics.
These are not your store bought factory chicken. We’ve raised that breed and we have pledged never to do it again (You can read our experience starting here). This year we are going with the Jumbo Cornish-X’s little brother the Cornish Roaster. They take longer to mature and are in between a standard breed and the Jumbo in size and growth.
Once you’ve read all the details, there is information for pre-ordering at the bottom of this post.
We are targeting slaughter/pick-up dates of:
“Fryers”
- Saturday and Sunday, April 17h and 18th
“Roasters”
- Saturday and Sunday, May 15th and 16th
- Saturday and Sunday, May 22nd and 23rd
“Fryers” – Fryers will weigh an estimated 3-4lbs, but size is not guaranteed. They are priced per lb. to account for variances. Fryers will reach slaughtering weights in approximately 8 weeks. Fryer chickens should be more suitable for quicker cooking applications (i.e. pan frying).
“Roasters” –Roasters will weigh an estimated 7-9lbs, but size is not guaranteed. They are priced per lb. to account for variances. Roasters will reach slaughtering weights in approximately 12 weeks. Roaster chickens are more suitable for longer cooking applications (i.e. oven roasting).
Details
Bird(s) will be picked up on farm on designated slaughter day and time. Your bird(s) will be humanely slaughtered by hand, plucked, and eviscerated. They will be ready to go immediately in to your freezer or oven. They will only be available whole (no parts). Final bird weights will vary and are determined after processing. If you are interested in all or part of the offal/giblets* from your bird please let us know.
Price $4.25 per lb. (dressed weight).
* Offal/giblets includes: head, neck, feet, heart, liver, and gizzard. Please understand that eviscerating poultry is a delicate task and we do our best to ensure that the offal is as complete as possible.
If you are interested in purchasing a LIVE bird ready for slaughter, please let us know. Price $2.50 per lb. (live weight).
Pick-up Dates/Times: Processing dates and times are predetermined, but will be finalized a few weeks prior to slaughter. We will contact you in the few weeks prior to each slaughter to arrange a pick-up date/time. Tentative pre-orders will be contacted first come, first served.
Regulations require that the birds are picked up within 4 hours of slaughter, or cooling/refrigeration standards apply. We kindly ask that you be on-time for your pick-up date and time to ensure that we remain in compliance. Changes to dates/times must be made 24 hours in advance.
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If you are interested in pre-ordering please send email to farmers@miscfarm.com with the following information. We will contact you a few weeks prior to slaughter dates to confirm your interest and pick-up dates/times.
How many FRYERS are you interested in (# of birds)?
How many ROASTERS are you interested in (# of birds)?
How many of EITHER are you interested in (lbs. or # of birds)? [Please specify if lbs. or # of birds]
Contact information
Name:
Phone:
Email:
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