Chicken producers talk about providing enriching environments for their birds, but none of the large producers ever provide trees for their chickens to climb. During the day, a growing sequoia is an enticing place to hang out, either underneath it or up in its branches.
I certainly don’t want to lump Mary’s Chicken with the likes of Foster Farms or Tyson, but even an outstanding farm like Mary’s Chicken which takes chicken welfare seriously can not provide the rich environment like a man and his hoe®.
Every chicken at a man and his hoe® has a story. Lucky had an unfortunate accident as a chick. Somehow she scraped the back of her head and for several weeks had to be separated from her siblings and mother while her wound healed. We kept her in a wire cage next to her siblings so she wouldn’t feel isolated. Even so, it was not an easy time for her as she so wanted to be running around with them. Unfortunately, chicks can’t help but peck when they see blood, and if we had let her run with her siblings, she would have met with an unfortunate demise.
Once her wound healed, we were able to set her free. Now she cuts an imposing figure, and has a habit of laying her egg in one of the dog houses. If we don’t fetch her egg quickly enough, the dogs get a tasty snack. We just have to keep our ears attuned to her “I’ve hatched an egg” cackle between seven and eight in the morning to fetch the eggs before the dogs get it.
The chicks which hatched December 19, 2013, are four months old now, nearly a month old. They are getting quite independent and running ahead of their mother. She’s the one trying to keep up with them now.
Some mothers stop their child rearing around now. Others continue for another month or two. We’ll see how long she keeps on the job.
Each chicken is unique. Each egg is unique. The variety of colors and patterns of chickens is endless. With each new chicken you can see evolution at work, trying new colors, patterns and personalities. The differences can be very subtle, but look closely and you’ll see them. And each chicken lays a slightly different egg every time. Over the life of a chicken it amounts to an incredible variety of eggs just from one bird. Life is always trying to better itself, trying this color, that shape, testing to see what will endure.
Buying eggs in a supermarket is downright depressing. The industrialists who supply the market with billions of eggs do their best to stamp out this riot of egg variety. By devoting all their energy on keeping costs down, they are depriving consumers of the joy beautiful eggs can bring. One amazing aspect of my chickens’ eggs is the sound they make when you tap them together. Close your eyes and gently tap these eggs together and you hear the distinctive clinking of bone china. You’ll never hear that from commercial eggs.
The variety of meat chicken can provide is truly remarkable. Below is the leg and thigh meat of a roasted, fully grown rooster. The flavor and texture is very similar to a mild goat roast. If you closed your eyes and ate this rich meat, you would have no idea it was chicken.
Gina Bisco in her article Rediscovering Traditional Meats from Historic Chicken Breeds, describes the traditional chicken meat classes, broiler, fryer, roaster and fowl, which were used until the 1940s to describe the various types of chicken meat.
This is chicken?
Up until the 1940s, the age at which a chicken was butchered determined its meat class. These classes are no longer used as modern chicken farming has dramatically speeded up the rate at which commercial chickens grow. Most now grow only six to eight weeks before they are processed. They eat voraciously, exercise little, and become fat birds in the blink of an eye. If humans grew at the speed modern chickens do, we would weigh over 300 pounds by the time we were two years old. At that speed, the traditional meat classes become meaningless as there is no difference between a six week old chicken and an eight week old chicken.
Don’t click this link if you are the least bit squeamish, but you get a good idea what modern chicken farming is about in the video: 45 Days: The Life and Death of a Broiler Chicken. Don’t worry, you’ll never find such chicken at A Man and His Hoe. Chickens here are hatched from eggs incubated by loving mothers, and raised with the care only mother hens can provide.
Trussed rooster
A fully grown rooster is quite impressive when it is trussed and ready to be roasted. Like all chickens which forage for food and walk long distances every day, most of the meat is on the legs and thighs. The redness of the legs and thighs shows through the firm skin.
A roasted rooster
And roasted, the deep color of the leg and thigh meat is even more evident.
A rooster like this is slow food at its best. Not only do you have to let a rooster grow nearly an entire year, once butchered, you need to let it age in the refrigerator for at least a week before you roast it or pressure cook it, another great way to prepare fully grown rooster.
Rooster breast meat
If you would like to try one of these magnificent birds, call or text me at 360-202-0386, or send an email to theman@amanandhishoe.com. Be advised, that these fully grown roosts are not available all the time, however you are always welcome to get your name on the waiting list for them.
