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Before I get into a gross animal slaughter thing: Farmsister’s email inbox. At the top of one of her inbox sections she’s got this starred email saved; her husband put it there because he knew it would make her laugh. One of the farms down the river sent out a post to a listserv they’re on advertising a position she was trying to hire someone to fill, but she worded it sort of… funny… and so the subject line of the email is Flower Farm Hand Job and Sister laughs uncontrollably whenever she sees it.
So, here’s the gross animal slaughter thing I feel compelled to write down, for some reason, so I’ll put it behind a cut, but it’s sort of really about how horrible the breed of chickens we’ve come to accept as the standard eatin’ bird in the US is– they’re called the Cornish Cross and they’re an f1 hybrid because they can’t, themselves, reproduce? anyway they’re awful creatures, and BIL really wants to start keeping a more heritage-style bird but the fastest-growing of those need 10-12 weeks to size up instead of the 8 weeks the CCs do, and that winds up being something like 30 cents more per pound, which is a lot when you already have to charge $5/lb for whole birds.
anyway. so think on that; your chicken was eight weeks old when it died. And Cornish Game Hens? Those are just the same bird, the same Cornish Cross, processed at four to six weeks instead. Probably didn’t have feathers yet. Which, like, whatever; the horrible thing is that if you let a CC live longer than that it’ll probably die spontaneously anyway. At 8 weeks we always find some of them that already couldn’t walk from their mutant muscle growth. Hideous stunted little lives, awful birds.
Anyway my gross thing was that I was eviscerating one and got my hand in there and got fucking stabbed, because their ribs are so fragile that the trip through the plucking machine had separated several of this one’s ribs from the breastbone internally. The plucking machine is not particularly violent, it’s like going through the spin cycle on a washing machine. Anyway.
I managed not to break the skin on my hand, and passed it along to my sister for de-lunging, and was like, “don’t put yr hand in there”, and she was like “??” and I was like “ribs” and she was like “ah” because THIS IS A COMMON PROBLEM
anyway the upside is that it’s easier to butterfly these chickens for cooking because their ribs are fucking toothpicks. You can use kitchen shears or just like, put your hand on them and crack them and then cut the meat with a knife, it’s so gross. They’re so gross.
But they’re so cheap to raise and they make so much meat. Sigh.
Before I get into a gross animal slaughter thing: Farmsister’s email inbox. At the top of one of her inbox sections she’s got this starred email saved; her husband put it there because he knew it would make her laugh. One of the farms down the river sent out a post to a listserv they’re on advertising a position she was trying to hire someone to fill, but she worded it sort of… funny… and so the subject line of the email is Flower Farm Hand Job and Sister laughs uncontrollably whenever she sees it.
So, here’s the gross animal slaughter thing I feel compelled to write down, for some reason, so I’ll put it behind a cut, but it’s sort of really about how horrible the breed of chickens we’ve come to accept as the standard eatin’ bird in the US is– they’re called the Cornish Cross and they’re an f1 hybrid because they can’t, themselves, reproduce? anyway they’re awful creatures, and BIL really wants to start keeping a more heritage-style bird but the fastest-growing of those need 10-12 weeks to size up instead of the 8 weeks the CCs do, and that winds up being something like 30 cents more per pound, which is a lot when you already have to charge $5/lb for whole birds.
anyway. so think on that; your chicken was eight weeks old when it died. And Cornish Game Hens? Those are just the same bird, the same Cornish Cross, processed at four to six weeks instead. Probably didn’t have feathers yet. Which, like, whatever; the horrible thing is that if you let a CC live longer than that it’ll probably die spontaneously anyway. At 8 weeks we always find some of them that already couldn’t walk from their mutant muscle growth. Hideous stunted little lives, awful birds.
Anyway my gross thing was that I was eviscerating one and got my hand in there and got fucking stabbed, because their ribs are so fragile that the trip through the plucking machine had separated several of this one’s ribs from the breastbone internally. The plucking machine is not particularly violent, it’s like going through the spin cycle on a washing machine. Anyway.
I managed not to break the skin on my hand, and passed it along to my sister for de-lunging, and was like, “don’t put yr hand in there”, and she was like “??” and I was like “ribs” and she was like “ah” because THIS IS A COMMON PROBLEM
anyway the upside is that it’s easier to butterfly these chickens for cooking because their ribs are fucking toothpicks. You can use kitchen shears or just like, put your hand on them and crack them and then cut the meat with a knife, it’s so gross. They’re so gross.
But they’re so cheap to raise and they make so much meat. Sigh.
