Chicken for dinner? Part 2

We are eight weeks into the chicken experiment, and it's time to start butchering the Cornish Cross chickens. We actually should have started sooner, because one dropped dead a few days ago.  Those that are still alive do nothing but sit in front of the feeder and eat. Their exercise consists of walking to the waterer for a drink, then walking back to the feeder. The heritage chickens (pictured above) won't be big enough to butcher for another six weeks. (If you missed the original post about my little experiment, you can find it here.) We wanted something to compare the CC chicken, so Mike butchered a year-old heritage rooster.

The CC weighed 5 pounds, 11.7 ounces at only eight weeks of age. (It's the one on the right, but you probably figured that out already.)

The heritage rooster weighed 4 pounds, 2.7 ounces at a year of age.

The breast alone on the CC weighed 2 pounds, 4 ounces. Normally, Jonathan eats a breast, and I eat one, but tonight I cut off about a fourth of a breast for my dinner. We cooked it using a favorite recipe -- pineapple chicken.

The verdict -- blah. When they've done blind taste tests, people usually describe the CC as tasteless and mushy. I definitely agree with the tasteless part, but I'd describe the texture more as rubbery, rather than mushy. I didn't even finish my portion. It was sadly uninspiring. If I ever want to lose weight, this would be the food to include in my diet. Normally I "mmmm" and "ooooh" during dinner, but not tonight. It was sad.

Another interesting observation -- the legs on the heritage chicken were much more reddish-purple. The legs on the CC were almost as pale as the breast meat. Jonathan even said that the thigh tasted very similar to the breast. I actually preferred the thigh -- it tasted like something, which is more than I can say for the breast meat, which was completely blah. I wonder if the lack of exercise is what causes the legs to look like breast meat? Perhaps well-developed muscles are redder?

The really disturbing part of our little experiment, however, was this --

I was looking at the things Mike pulled out of the chickens, and I saw this big pickle-looking thing. Having been diagnosed (incorrectly) with a gall bladder problem a few years ago, I knew exactly what it was. I quickly realized, however, that I had never seen a chicken's gall bladder. I asked Mike where was the gall bladder from the heritage chicken. He looked for a few seconds and finally found it. I had never noticed one before today because it is tiny. I wanted to weigh the two gall bladders, but the heritage chicken's gall bladder was too small for my scale to weigh. Visually, I'd say the CC gall bladder was about six times as large. It looked like an over-filled balloon ready to pop -- and it did rupture a little later just sitting on the plate. I wonder if a ruptured gall bladder is what caused that CC chicken to die a few days ago? The gall bladder produces bile for digesting fat, and if a chicken is eating more, it needs to digest more, which could explain why the gall bladder is so large. It's overworked.

The liver on the heritage chicken was also about half the size of the CC's liver. I have no idea why the liver would be so large, but it makes me think that even though we are raising the CC exactly the same as the heritage chickens, they are not as healthy. The heritage liver is also much more red, which usually means higher in iron. It would be fascinating to compare the nutritional value of the two different birds, but that is beyond my abilities. I just can't believe that such a pale liver has as much nutrition as the bright red liver.

Katherine is taking biology this year in college, and she needs an independent honors project. As we were talking today about the differences between these two chickens, she decided to ask her professor if she can do an experiment comparing the different chickens. She would start over with new chicks and keep track of every ounce they consume, and then dissect them, and weigh and measure the organs. It sounded like a good idea this afternoon before I had actually eaten the chicken. Now that I have had the most disappointing culinary experience since eating at a greasy spoon in the middle of nowhere, I am wondering what we will do with the four mutant chickens we have left. I am not crazy about the idea of ever raising them again, even in the name of science. After all, if we raise them, someone should eat them.