Heritage Chicken vs Hybrid Broilers: Flavor, Cost, Health & Reality Explained

In this episode of the Poultry Nerds Podcast, Carey and Jennifer break down the real-world differences between heritage chickens, hybrid broilers, and the Cornish Cross birds used in commercial meat production. If you’ve ever wondered why home-raised chicken tastes different than store-bought chicken — or whether raising your own meat birds is actually worth it — this episode dives deep into the truth most people never hear.

From Orpingtons and dual-purpose heritage breeds to fast-growing commercial broilers like the Cobb and Ross lines, this conversation explores flavor, texture, nutrition, growth rates, feed management, processing timelines, bone broth quality, freezer space, bird welfare, and the realities of modern poultry production.

Jennifer also shares firsthand experience raising large batches of Cornish Cross birds, including the smell, management challenges, leg problems, feed consumption, mortality issues, and why many homesteaders eventually transition toward slower-growing heritage breeds instead.

You’ll also learn why older pasture-raised birds produce darker, richer, more nutrient-dense broth, how exercise and bone development affect flavor and texture, and why many traditional chicken breeds create a completely different eating experience than what most people buy at the grocery store.

Whether you raise backyard chickens, homestead, process your own meat birds, or simply want healthier and better-tasting food for your family, this episode offers practical, honest insight without the fluff.

Topics Covered:

•  Heritage chickens vs Cornish Cross 
•  Hybrid broiler chickens explained 
•  Why grocery store chicken tastes different 
•  Raising meat birds at home 
•  Pasture-raised poultry management 
•  Chicken flavor and texture differences 
•  Bone broth from heritage birds 
•  Feed costs and freezer planning 
•  Broiler health and growth problems 
•  Best chickens for self-sufficiency and homesteading 

Valley Hatchery is a proud sponsor of Poultry Nerds, find more at ValleyHatchery.com

Valley Hatchery is a proud sponsor of Poultry Nerds, find more at ValleyHatchery.com

Transcript

0:23

Does venison taste like beef? No. No, but it's interchangeable. They say everything tastes like chicken. So today we have another listener request. We're getting lots of those. I like them,'cause, when you're like what should we talk about this week on the show?" And then you have listener requests, it's ooh, that just makes it easy. It does. And-'Cause we like our listeners. And this one is good right before I make dinner. True. So today, for those that can't see, we're gonna talk about heritage chicken versus hybrid, from what you buy at the store. And does it really all just taste like chicken? No. No. Well- It does since the meat birds don't really have much flavor, I guess that's easy to say that. But even if you take a meat bird or a herita- if you take a heritage bird and season it and cook it and all of that, it's like even more flavorful. Yep. So I think people, if you haven't ever tried a heritage bird you're really missing out, honestly. But they all have their purpose in the pantry. I don't think one necessarily replaces another until you've developed your palate maybe. I personally am to the point where I don't wanna eat another Cornish, but, now that I have the breasts, but we're gonna kinda get into that. And really there's three categories, but I didn't know how to make that into a title, because the breast is technically a heritage, but it's not the equivalent of eating a Orpington or a Red. I'm not eating a Red, I'm just gonna assume that it's like eating an Orpington. They're- They're not the best. Th- it's still chicken, and it's still better than, the hybrids. All right, so let's look at my slideshow. I'm getting all kind of fancy with my slideshows here. They're nice. So a heritage bird is one that can naturally mate and reproduce. So just your regular barnyard chicken or one that you see at a show, those would all be heritage birds. Y- your traditional breeds, like the Orpington or the Bielefelder, or, whatever, or the Rocks they're typically dual- Yeah, there's tons of them. Yeah, just whatever you want. It's a chicken a regular chicken. Heritage. They're dual purpose. You're gonna get meat and eggs off of them, and- Yep and you could probably do triple purpose and add some bug control and some yard candy and some just relaxation TV in your yard maybe. But- when I look at y- when I look at your Orpingtons, like this time of year especially, it's like a bunch of b- bleached blondes out there hanging out on the beach. Yes. And then they run and waddle kinda at the same time. Yeah, fluffy butts. They grow slower, but that is going to be dependent on your breed. So some will grow faster than others, and then some varieties inside the breed would grow faster. So a utility or hatchery version of an Orpington is gonna grow a whole lot faster than what I have. So there's so much variation inside of a heritage breed that, yes, we're lumping them all together, but really they can't be lumped, if that makes sense. Yeah, they fit in the real chicken category, where you know what its parents was, you know what it came from, and all that. It's not like a hodgepodge that a m- mad scientist made up and you decided to eat it. Cause, a lot of people don't think about or don't realize what your commercial chickens live like or whatever else. And if you've ever seen the inside of one of those chicken houses, you might stop eating that chicken I've been in'em. So there's different kinds of heritage breeds. This is a picture of one of your reds. I picked her for a reason. We're gonna talk about her for a second. But they can be fast maturing, slow maturing, or, and dual purpose. The reason why I picked her was because I want people, if they're watching the video the meat birds are selected for their breast size, for their... Because you wanna eat the white meat. That's what society wants- Yeah, most people do is white meat. So what I'm looking at here, and what I wanna point out, is the size of her chest is not like a Cornish. This is a more natural looking bird. And you're not gonna get 10 chicken tenders off of one bird with one of these. So visually that's what I wanted to show with this picture. In contrast, this is a broiler chicken, and you can see that you're probably gonna get at least 10 chicken tenders off of this bird. Yeah, that son of a gun looks like it's two-weeks-old. Yeah. I tried to find some good pictures from when I was growing them, and this is just a stock picture because mine were just... My pictures were just pitiful and I didn't want to use them. They're never that clean. No, they're not really. So broiler chicken, when we talk about broilers, meat chickens, we're talking about, in the United States, we're talking usually about the Cobb 500s or the Rosses. I don't know what the number is on the Ross, but those are- Cobb and Ross both have a couple of different variations that they've come up with over the years. Every time they get one that's more efficient, they change the number and- Spin it out. So did you see I wrote I don't know if- I don't even know if you look at our website. Did you look at our website and see the article I wrote on the Cobb 800 that just came out? Yeah. That thing is just massive. And what's crazy is they just had the 7 less than six months ago. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was recent re- it was I guess not really recently, but-'cause we already have a new one, but whatever. But- That just shows that there's some mad scientist playing with some chicken genetics to try to make higher profit margins. So what a meat bird is what we typically will refer to as a Cornish Cross, because they're Cornish and rocks at, if you wanna be real general about the breakdown. But they're hybridized so many times over, and over, and there's so much money spent on perfecting these birds, and I don't think people realize the amount of money and the amount of science that goes into generating them. So when I was doing the college course for the incubation- that was for commercial- because that's where the money is. That's what, so that's where the information you're gonna get. And even I was, I can look at stuff and I'm intelligent, but you, there's things you just don't even think about. So for example, when they s- take'em to the processing facility, that processing facility is designed to handle a certain pound carcass. So everything is down to pennies really. So this bird is graded when it hatches. It has a certain feed to create that milder flavor. There's a lot of wheat in their feed. And it's supposed to grow, like they're trying to get it down to 58 days or something, and they have to meet a certain live weight so it will fit into the carriers, which will then be the right size to go onto the hooks in the processing facility to fit- The ba- everything is right down to- they want it all to be- Uniform alike and uniform, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy the amount of money that is spent. We're talking billions every year, not just once, but billions every year to get your chicken as cheap as they possibly can. And it's really eye-opening if you really delve into all of it. So if you get, if you go to Walmart and you buy a Tyson chicken pack, right? That's what, that's how they're fed, that's how they're raised, that's how they're finished and packaged and washed, I think. They wash them with chemicals to kill salmonella and all kinds of stuff. And I live near a processing facility here. Oof it's actually in the next town over, and so there's a lot of people here who have worked for them, and they will... They're never eating another Tyson chicken as long as they live. So if you've never visited these places, see if you can't try to visit one. Then you know what you're eating. You probably won't want to. You should. I know there used to be one in Tuscaloosa, and they had this huge wall of fans. So when an 18-wheeler would pull up with the baskets of chickens, they had fans blowing across them, so in the summertime they didn't, fall out before they wanted them to. And when you would drive by there- ugh. It would, it was horrible smelling. So their reasoning for doing this is they're telling the marketing wording that they use is that they have to mass produce these food, this food in order to feed society. Before we had mass production, society ate. Ate a lot better too just question it. Just question it. Now, of course, you have the alternative, and you can raise them at home. Now, I raise them, I have raised them in large quantities three separate occasions that I can remember off the top of my head. One, I kept them up in the condos over at the barn. And the second time, I put them up on the hill in the runs. And the third time, I kept them in the condos, but every morning I opened the doors and turned them out. Yeah. So that was a little bit different. So their lifespan's pretty short. Eight weeks is max, so you're looking at six to eight weeks. It is not like a regular chicken. Yes, you have to brood them, but it's more like the timeline of a quail. So you brood them- Yeah maybe on heat for 10, 12, 14 days max, depending on the time of year maybe, and then they need to go out draft-free, but they don't need any heat. These little boogers are so hot. Yeah, they put off a ton of heat. They will steam up the barn. The first time I put, took some out of the brooder I was like,"Holy crap." I thought I was cooking almost. These things are really hot. Yeah. Yeah. I can see where they would- And then- overheat quickly. Yep. They do not feather like a chicken. This is really not a good representation of a broiler. She has about three times as many feathers as, That's probably a breeder- Maybe that you found a picture of. Yeah. They don't feather out very well, so it makes it easy to pluck them. That is true. So then, let's see, after about two weeks, maybe three, depending on the weather, you can take them outside. And you're gonna want to take them outside because depending on how many you've got in your space, it is a hot mess, and I literally say hot mess. Yeah. And then, and if you've never raised them, there is no way to describe the smell. They have their own smell. And it's pretty rough. I can't- Put it's something that I can visualize or smell, smellalize right now, and I don't really want to remember the smell. But then you put them outside, and if you can get them on pasture and keep them moving, that's probably better. But they don't want to move. They want to eat and gorge and, all the time, their entire life. That's what they want to do. So you don't really have to worry about them running off because they- They ain't going anywhere. So even when I turned them loose I would say that the farthest from the barn that they went, 20 feet. They didn't go- Yeah very far at all. And of course, I have a big 14-foot door on the front of my barn, and I have swinging gates on it. And we had to put those there for the ducks, of all reasons'cause the ducks would come in and just make a mess in the barn. But it was a good thing I had them there when I turned the Cornish out, because they would come and they would line up like zombies, like on, what's that show, Walking Dead, where they line up at the fence and they try to reach through. Yeah. And they were trying to get through to the food- Yeah on the other side. They knew it was in there. And so yeah they're very food-orientated. And then even out on pasture, they get leg problems, feet problems. The water intake is an insane amount of water. They can go through, I don't even know how much per bird, but gallons and gallons a day it seems like. You can't keep them in water. And then of course it comes out the other end, so then everything's wet and messy on the other end. Yeah. And then once they get so big, they wanna start dropping dead. So you don't have any leeway. You can't plan a vacation. You can't, say,"Okay the weather's gonna be bad this weekend, so we're not processing them." You don't have that luxury. When their time is up, their time is up. And that last batch that we did 150 and that was for three households for supposedly a year is, was the plan. And, we couldn't do 150 in a day, and so what we did was we just took the biggest ones that looked like they wouldn't make it until the next weekend- and we processed them. And then throughout the week, I would go out there, and you can tell when they're fixing to go. They'll get really lethargic, like their heart's giving out, and they get really lethargic, and you can tell that they're not gonna make it till the next day. And so every day that week, we processed several that day. A little bit of fresh chicken. Yep, exactly. And then the next weekend we did the next, as many as we could of the largest ones, and then the third weekend we just finished up any of the runts that needed to grow an extra week. And we all- Yeah, I, and I tell people- swore we would never do it again. People, I've had people that rent my plucker, and I've had people that just ask me about it in general, and I tell them,"You'll know when it's time.""And you're gonna do all the males one week, and hope you can do all the females the next weekend." And they're like,"Really?" Yep. Yep. Because, when they... With them, if you keep them moving and you keep their diet very limited and that sort of thing so they can't gorge themselves, you can keep them alive longer, but you must manage it really well or they'll get really obese and croak out. So you cannot feed them 24/7. You have to decide how you're gonna feed them. Some people do 12 on and 12 off, and I did that when they were in the barn before going out. And once they were outside, I elected to feed them twice. So I filled up the feeders in the morning and then again in the evening. Basically, here, let me feed you and open the doors, and then let me feed you to bring you back in, because they're very food-orientated. It's raising a pig, you can get a pig to do whatever if you've got food. Yeah. So it's like that. But the manure is so wet, and it cakes to everything. So the last two or three weeks of their lives, even though I was letting them out onto the grass every day, I would, I actually got to where I moved the feeders to the grass in the morning to get them out of the condos, and then I would close the doors to make sure that they didn't go in there because it was so packed. It's just really hard to explain. So y- it's eight weeks to me of unenjoyable, smelly work. And at the end of... And then you've gotta do a lot of work regardless of the weather, and then you... it's not just processing them. It's breaking them down, vacuum sealing them, and then you have to have freezer space. So if you're gonna do enough for a year, if you can just kinda imagine, f- if you eat one a week, 52 whole birds in your freezer. Now, we don't buy whole birds, so I was spatchcocking them and breaking them in half and cutting the backs out for broth and vacuum sealing them so I could lay them flat. Took up less space, but that's now 104 packages of chicken in the freezer. That's a lot of chicken. And then the other two households had to buy standup freezers. So I would never do that again. And even when I had them up in the breeder pens, they don't move around like a chicken. So the grass didn't get eaten. It got more flattened. Mushed or flattened, yeah. Yeah. And then their poop just sticks on top of it because it's at a carpet now of matted grass. So I hope I'm not horribly telling people not to do it because if you're in a confined space and you're, you can't have chickens all year long, it's a great resource. But at the same time, you also need to be prepared for- What you're getting into their expectation. Yeah. So back to my slide here. So with the broiler chickens, they grow really fast. You're in and out with, getting them and getting them out of there. You don't get any eggs. You do get a lot of white meat, though,'cause that's what they're bred for. And they are bred for uniformity- Now, I did not find them to be very uniform when I had them. You would get some that wouldn't get over three and a half pounds, and then you had some that were, like, seven or eight pounds. And of course, they're all eating the same thing. It could be related to feeder space maybe. I was gonna say, a lot of times that's feeder space because, if you're, especially if you're using the round feeders and you've got a bunch, 150 whatever Cornish, you're gonna have to have a ton of those feeders. If you've got 150, for them to all be able to eat at once, you're gonna need probably f- 40 to 50 feet of trough space. Wow. Yeah, I didn't have that, you think about it, not when they're little, but probably the last three weeks of their life they're huger than a normal chicken and they're wide, so I would say you need, if they're, if they can access it from both sides, at 25 feet at least. I would just like to interject here. I did not set out to have 150. I bought 200 in conjunction with other people. And one person came and took their 50, and the other person didn't show up. So we were only supposed to have 100 for three households. So anyway, so that happens, too, so be aware that if you're gonna buy together with other people to get a discount,'cause you do get a qua- quantity discount on buying- those chicks when you order them. And it was significant enough that I put that order together, and I didn't ever do it again because I got stuck with those extra birds. And they do eat a lot, but even after I fed them non-GMO and took care of them with the shavings and everything, it's been a few years, but they... I think they came out to$7 a bird, even with the cost of the chick. Now, I know that the- Sounds about right the cost of the chick has greatly increased since then. I wanna say it was, like,$2 back then. I don't know what they are now. If you know the right places to get them and you get quantity, you can get them, you can still get them around there. Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn't know. Okay, so this is a picture of some boys, my Orpingtons, that are in the freezer now. And- The reason why I wanted to talk about these guys was m- my big old Orpingtons, these guys probably topped out 9 or 10 pounds when we processed them. And so they were probably 10, 11 months old maybe nine, somewhere around in there. So they were out on grass. They moved. They flew up onto a roost. They argued with each other. They fluttered around. They acted like chickens, right? They ate bugs. They ate grass. They laid in the sun. They ate dirt and rocks and lord knows what else. I bet when those suckers land on a roost pole that's a couple feet up, I bet if it's a two-by-four, I bet it bows a little bit. It definitely flexes when they land. Yeah, exactly. The reason why I'm pointing all of that out is a Cornish like I said, remember he doesn't move 20 feet from the barn. These guys moved, like a chicken moves. Yeah. And so that developed their tendons. So the tendons are attached to their keel bone that works their wings, right? And so all those tendons developed. The tendons in their legs developed from jumping and landing, and they had to build up those leg muscles in order to do that. So there's a big difference from a chicken that lays around and grows muscle and a chicken that jumps around and works the muscles to, to grow them. And so those bones developed over, let's just go with 10 months, okay? So 10 months of minerals being absorbed, vitamins, from everything that they ate, and the exercise- and all of those good things, and that's where the flavor comes from. And but at the same time, you also get a texture change. When something is just laying around and gaining weight, it's gonna be, I'm gonna use the word mushy almost, like it just falls apart. And these guys are gonna have more connective tissue, so when you're eating it, people refer to it as chewy. S- and it's gonna have a stronger flavor. It's gonna be a darker color. The Cornish is gonna be like a white meat. This is still white meat, but it's gonna be A darker white. Yeah. So the it's different. It's... I always tell people it's like saying venison and beef is interchangeable. It is. You can still put both in spaghetti, but it's gonna taste different because one was wild and ate stuff out in the woods, and most of the beef that you buy at the store is gonna be grain lot stuff. There's a difference. But I will say- if you grow your beef and you harvest a buck, and your spouse absolutely refuses to eat Bambi's daddy- so they won't have it, but if you use that to cook spaghetti, before they get home, they'll never know. I'm gonna tell you a secret. I figured it out on accident. If you take ground venison- and you put it in, and it's m- still frozen and you're trying to cook it real quick, so you put a bunch of water in the pan to try to defrost it and cook it all at the same time- you essentially almost, for lack of a better word, boil the meat. That takes a lot of the flavor out of it. The wild- And the person doesn't always know that they're eating venison when you do it that way. And I was able to clean out the freezer quickly when I figured that out. Nice. I know. See, happy accidents, right? Yeah. Okay. So to go back to the Orpingtons or the, even the reds or anything else, the heritage breeds the more age and the more activity and the more varied the diet, the more developed the bones are going to be. Yeah. And that's where you're gonna get into the different chicken broths. And so I grew up, my mom won't eat here because she's scared of what I will feed her. She likes to eat at McDonald's, and she likes to pour her chicken broth out of a box, and it, you're supposed to be able to see through it. That's what she thinks normal chicken broth is gonna look like. Okay. My chicken broth looks like the color of this screen. It's pretty dark brown. So if you've not made broth with a heritage chicken carcass, then to be honest with you, you haven't lived because that is some of the best broth. You don't even have to put anything else in it. You can just sit and drink mugs of it in the wintertime. Yeah, it's really rich. Yeah. Maybe a little salt but yeah, we'll just, we just... So I cook mine down. What I do is I just cook my carcasses down, and then I, strain it, and then I put it on the, back on the stove and reduce it probably by two-thirds. And when you do that and you put it in the refrigerator, it basically all turns into a gelatin. And at that point, if you don't have a freeze-dryer, put it in a jar and just leave it in your refrigerator, and you just take a spoonful of it out whenever you want some. I put it in the freeze-dryer and turn it into a powder and keep it in jars on my shelf. And in the wintertime, I actually keep it by my coffee mugs, and we'll keep hot water in the coffee pot, and we'll just put three or four tablespoons of that in the mugs and drink chicken broth when we're cold in the middle of the day. So it's pretty good. But so you'll get the darker color, the fuller flavor. The gelatin will be in there. It'll be more nutritious because of the minerals and the vitamins. It'll be gelatinousious. Which is all good for you too. I like that word. So until I had that, I tried to make broth from the Cornish, and you get the stuff just like you pour out of a box. And then it occurred to me that's what they're doing because they are using every piece of the chicken to make money. And so when they cut it up for the tenders to put in the package that you buy at Walmart, they are left with the bones, so they make the broths and put them in the boxes and sell them to you. Yep. And that's why it's so light because they never developed the bone and the connective tissue to make a decent broth. Okay, so this is actually my kitchen where I was working. So you can the chicken. Now, I will say I'm going to go on a limb and say this is Orpington in this picture. If you chop up the white meat, the breast meat on an Orpington, and you can it, you cannot tell the difference if it's Orpington or breast or Cornish in that jar. Something about the canning process tenderizes it so much that it has the same texture at the end. You're, like, cooking it slowly when you can it in broth. So I could see how that could make it really tender. I- And I'm suddenly getting really hungry too. So I can a lot of chicken, a lot of chicken, and I have figured out to do it bone in, and that has really made the difference. So David likes white meat, and I like dark meat, and but we both like the broth, the richness of the broth. So I always use quart, no, pint jars, wide mouth pint jars. And so what I do is I put either a leg or a thigh in, and then I stuff white meat chunks around in it, and then I can it, so you not only get the meat, but then you also get the bone broth and the gelatin coming out of the bone into the jar on top of it. And then when you open it, I've had people ask me, how to de-bone it once you open it. You just grab the bone and pull it out. You twist your wrist as you lift up- and then dump it out. That in the front looks like it's just pulled chicken with some barbecue sauce or something on it. I was gonna say, it looks like it's hot, like it's got some hot sauce on it. Nah, that's not gonna be in this house. Probably was either barbecue sauce or taco meat. So the Orpington, because remember I said the connective tissue and it's gonna be a little chewier, the Orpington is good for s- cutting it in small pieces and using it in soups or- stews or canning it things like that. And then the Cornish, if you wanted to compare and contrast those two, we kept the Cornish for barbecue chicken, baked chicken, fried chicken, because you needed that more tender and less chewy, yeah. Because, we're, while we s- live on the farm and we try to eat- You know, is what we have. We were still raised on that processed texture, and sometimes you just- Got, yeah, it's like a guilty pleasure. Yeah, exactly. It's something you know- you know it's not great for you, but you still like it anyway, yep. Go with- so I wanna point out two things. The Cornish, remember what I said, you have to... You're in and out. You're not gonna wanna keep Cornish year-round. I wouldn't think you would want to. So you're gonna have to have freezer space. Whereas if you're raising heritage birds, you could just go out there once a month. I was gonna say, if you're raising heritage birds and you decide you want some chicken, you can- Just go get some go pick out the one that you wanna get off your feed bill. Yeah, and that's how people did it because they didn't have refrigerators, so they just- Doesn't get a whole lot fresher than that. No, and we've done that. You do wanna let them rest if you can. So you don't have a committed timeframe, if you don't feel like butchering this weekend and you have heritage birds, then, okay go on vacation and they'll still be there when you get back. They'll just be, an ounce bigger or something. But you cannot do that with Cornish. You can't break a leg and go in the hospital. You can't do anything. You're committed to that timeframe. Yeah. So just keep that in mind. So we g- I had it in my head to kinda compare the breasts in there a little bit and we've kinda not talked about them. So when I, when you brought me the breasts, I was reluctant. I assumed they would taste more like the Orpington, and David was going to want that more processed texture of the Cornish. Since we have eaten the breasts for, what, almost two years now I will never go back to Cornish, ever. That's how much I like it. It is a middle ground. If you didn't know about the broth and the richness of an older Orpington or any older bird, then the breasts would be great and might actually taste a little wild compared to a Cornish. The bones are gonna be more developed'cause the birds are older, but they're n- still won't give you the broth of an older bird. And I really like chicken broth. I have so much chicken broth in the pantry. We use it for everything. And folk, she ain't lying. Like- No I've seen her- Shelves of it. I've seen her collection of mason jars. Lord forbid her go in the store and they're trying to clearance them out. She's gonna help them out real fast. Yep. It's, I gotta admit, there's been a couple times where I've went places and been like, Y'all are selling pint, quart, wid- oh, they're wide?" Quart. Oh, hey, I n- how many, y'all got any more of these?"'Cause you can do so much with a wide-mouth jar. You can. I don't use regular mouth. I use always quart, no, I keep saying quart. I use pints, wide-mouth pints, because it's the perfect size for two people. And if you have extra people, you open two jars. It's not rocket science. We're not leftovers people. Leftovers go in the refrigerator to be thrown away a week later. And so two a pint jar is the perfect size for us. And so I have so much chicken broth put up, and I can look at the color of it and tell you if it's Orpington or breasts. That's the how much of a difference there is. And the kids come over, and they shop in our pantry, and I give them the breast broth. Because I'll keep all the Orpington broth for ourselves. So call me a mean mama, but I did all the work, so I'm gonna keep it and do it that way. It is what it is. Exactly. So the breasts, I'm harvesting mine right around 17 weeks, so you still get that tender of the young bird. The I'm running right around a five-ish pound carcass on them, which is plenty of food for us. I'm tractoring them so they get grass and bugs and food. They get your food until about two weeks before, so around 15 weeks, and then I switch them off to a All-Flock because I wanna put a nice fat layer on'em and a little bit blander flavor, get rid of the fish meal. And that's just- I was gonna say, you don't like the the fish meal or the barley or the wheat or the oats being really strong? So I know that your food's got fish meal, a lot of fish meal in it, and it doesn't bother anybody else, but I can taste it. Now, that, that breeder ration has a lot in it. Yeah. So- Now, the- I can taste it in the eggs. You're not the only person that said that. Oh, okay. So my layer flock gets Kalmbach because of that, because I eat a lot of scrambled eggs. But the breeders all get your food. The grow-outs that we're gonna put in the freezer get your food, because they grow better on it, and then I'll switch them off to All-Flock in order to finish them. Now, I have tried to finish them like the French finish'em with a lot of wheat and corn and milk. I could not tell a difference. I have tried it- Yeah not with those- I know over there they sell those and they pay$150 a head or some retar- in- incredible price on'em that I would never pay for a chicken a dead chicken anyway, and maybe if I paid that much for a chicken I could tell the difference in the flavor. But I, for a 17-week-old laying hen- you would be looking for a difference if you paid that kind of money I also think that... Okay, so it's not just the finishing, and I think people get hung up on that. I have read how they do it, and they raise them on pasture until a certain age, and then they bring'em in and finish them, and it's not 17 weeks. It's older The difference is that area of France the pasture and the climate is more like Oregon. The lush pasture fields, the green- it's not like what we have here. And like right now, it doesn't rain here, so our grass is gonna be dead here in a month, and we're not gonna have anything- all summer. Until winter, maybe we might have something. So I don't have the same environment here. So it would be wrong to try to finish them and then compare it, because they're basic- I'm doing the best I can with the pasture that I have. But basically, most of their diet is grain. It's just a fact. And so putting them on a different grain for the last two weeks, I don't think is going to change that flavor profile. But if you had them on green grass their whole life for months on end, and then put them on a mild flavored grain, yeah, I could probably tell the difference. That would be like butchering a cow in the spring versus butchering a cow in the fall. In the spring when the onions are shooting up, you're gonna taste onion in the meat. You always butcher in the fall- so you don't have that. So anyway, so the breasts act like a chicken, reproduce like a chicken, lay eggs like machines. I have never seen a bird lay eggs like those things. And they grow, and they're tasty, and their meat is tender. You can cut it with a fork. Almost right off the bird, you can cut it with a fork. So I, I don't see why you wouldn't want to just have a breast, and then you wouldn't... You don't have to buy extra freezers just for the chickens. So we now have it worked out to doing 30 birds per quarter. The kids told me a number of birds that they wanted, or they thought that they wanted, and so we're working at 30 right now, and then we can tweak it if we want to. But I think that will be sufficient. That's easy to do. Yeah, exactly. So that's four months, right? So I re- I hatch them they lay the eggs, so that's a week. Hatch them, so we're at a month. Raise them for three weeks, or three months, and butcher them, put them in the freezer. Whoop-de-doo. Yeah. Yeah, we- It's great can do 30 in a day. That's no big deal. Yeah. All right. So this slide is just pros and cons. So the pros is you always have birds, you never have to buy chicks, and you have eggs. The cons would be you have to feed them all year because you always have birds. You have to buy chicks if you want to raise the meat birds because you can't reproduce those, and you don't get any eggs. And there's no right or wrong answer. It's what you want to eat, how you wanna take care of them, the space that you have, and, The time that you have and how much money you wanna put in to feed. Do you wanna feed them every day for an entire year? There's no wrong answer. But just, be honest with yourself on what you wanna do. It's, it is what it is. It's your kitchen. That's right. Your kitchen, your farm, your rules. Yeah. So anyway, I hope that answers her question. I guess the answer at the end of the day is I do Breeds and Orpingtons, but for two different reasons. That's fair. To me, it just really depends on what you want. Yeah.

Alex 44:24

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