Well we sent live chickens off to the slaughterman and got back dead chickens that we plucked, gutted, prepared and salted. I have been more than pleasantly surprised with the results from this grow my own meat experiment.

I expected that the Ross 308 hybrid chicken (what I have referred to as a Frankenchicken) would be bland and tasteless but I was wrong. We’ve eaten one of the chickens (picture above) and he was absolutely delicious. Having had chicken meat from conventional chicken farms where the chickens are raised in big sheds I’ve always noticed that this meat is not as ‘chicken-ey’ as I remember chicken being from when I was a child and when chicken was more of a treat.

This chicken actually tasted like chicken. It tasted like the chicken of my childhood. The only difference between my chicken and the broiler house chicken is that I’ve raised my chickens with access to the outside and with nutritional treats like greens. What’s more I seem to have actually broken even on the running costs of the chicken compared to buying a similar quality of chicken from a shop.

These chickens that probably spent their early lives in a broiler shed adapted really well to free ranging and I’ve had none of the problems of ‘keel over’ that some American growers of the US equivalent to the Ross 308, the Cornish Cross, have had whereby the chickens get so big so quickly that they die from heart attacks. I would most certainly have the Ross’s again although I’m toying with the idea of investing in an Electric Hen and getting them from day olds next time as that way I can control every aspect of their raising. However I’m equally interested in getting a small breeding flock of a heritage breed such as Light Sussex where I can raise the resulting cockerels (killed at 18-20 weeks) for meat and get 260 eggs per year from the hens that the breeding chickens produce.

The first chicken we cooked weighed in at a respectable 7 lb 8oz dressed weight and resembled a small turkey rather than the sort of chicken one would buy from a supermarket. It took three and a quarter hours to cook such was the size of this bird. He could only fit in our biggest roasting tin one which just about fits width wise in our oven.

I’d definitely say that growing my own meat chickens has been a success. We’ve had no illnesses among the chickens despite my decision to feed the chickens a feed that was not medicated against Coccidiosis on the assumption that the growers had been vaccinated against this disease and feeding medicated feed is said to stop the vaccine from working. What worked in my favour was making sure that the deep litter area of the house and run was scrupulously clean and that fresh litter was put down over the top of the soiled litter. Cleanliness is next to godliness in the world of chicken keeping. Also because of this decision to deep litter I now have a massive amount of soiled chicken litter that I can turn into compost or swap with neighbouring gardeners for some of their produce. A win win situation for me.

I was wary about whether a chicken bred to be happy in a shed would take to free ranging but I’m happy to say that the chickens did take to free ranging and quite well. My chickens at least had a decent life with sun and rain and good food before they went off to freezer camp, unlike your average supermarket cheap chicken.