New, Easy Way to Raise Tender Chicken
(Page 3 of 4)
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
First, instead of using a chopping block and axe or the more expert commercial poultryman's method of sticking through the roof of the mouth, we use a gadget which looks like a miniature guillotine. This extremely humane device makes killing easy, sure and not messy.
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Secondly, after dipping the chicken into hot water - not hot enough to burn chicken's skin - for about 30 seconds and plucking the feathers clean, we split the broiler down the back. This makes the intestines easy to remove in a mass. The bird can then be cut completely in half, washed, quartered; and it's done in much less time.
Tenderest Chicken
Battery broilers, fryers, or even roasters - and we've raised and eaten all three - are more tender than chicken grown on range. The reason for this is immediately apparent - broilers raised in confinement do not toughen their muscles as do birds grown on range. Battery broilers and fryers, in fact, are usually so tender that the wholesale buyer of live poultry often will not buy them to dress and market, because battery broilers picked up alive at the farm and trucked even 10 to 20 miles, often lose up to 25% of their weight they are so tender. However, this commercial disadvantage is a distinct plus when you are raising chicken for your own use.
Suggested Reading:
Better Broilers from Batteries, $1.00. Starting Right with Poultry - especially written by a leading authority for the beginner and part-time farmer. $2.75. Producing Eggs and Chickens with the Minimum of Purchased Feed, 35¢ Chicken of Tomorrow for Homesteaders, 35¢
Home Made Brooder P.S. And we found Brower Mfg. Co., of Quincy, III, to be a very reliable supply house for all kinds of poultry-raising equipment. Send for their catalog.
If you do not have or buy the battery brooder pictured on the opposite page, you can easily set up a simple brooding; outfit as shown. (Or you can buy a simple brooder like this at very small expense.) You can vary size of light bulb, get approximately right temperature under brooder - about 90 degrees one inch from floor, reducing gradually to room temperature in about 4 weeks. Then remove brooder.
Floor space required for each bird is about 7 to 10 square inches under brooder and about 1/2 square foot outside brooder. Fine meshed wire or tar paper 12" high should be used to confine chicks close to brooder for first week.
Room or building used must be clean, fairly warm (70 degrees desirable - must not be less than 50), well ventilated, preferably with windows facing south for maximum sunlight. Your feed and grain dealer will have litter for floor, inexpensive feeding and watering implements; perhaps free, detailed pamphlets on this phase of poultry raising.
