20 hours ago, kieplangdu said:
BTW, I have been buying Amish chicken for over 15 years from Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania and have never ever received aCornish Cross. ...
See AlsoOrganic Eggs | Amish Country and Cage Free | Sauder's EggAmish, free range, organic — not all chicken is raised the sameThe Amish Way of Raising Healthy Chickens - Chicago Live PoultryAmish Foods (Cultural Cuisine Guide)...with different breed due to them breeding their chicken themselves....
What breed are they selling you then? How long are they raised?
Cornish cross broilers can be bred and hatched just like any other chicken. They are all domestic chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus).
I am not contesting that there are Amish who raise chickens and sell them directly to consumers in parts of Appalachia where Amish populations are common. Rather, it is the suggestion that wholesale (restaurant, retail store) “Amish Country poultry” has characteristics beyond who is raising them. As best I can tell, there is nothing in the “Amish country” name that mandates that those raising the chickens are bonafide Christian traditionalists riding buggies and closing their britches with button closures. Or that the broilers are a certain breed, raised for a certain amount of time, fed a particular diet, allotted a certain amount of pasture or slaughtered in a particular manner. There is nothing in Gerber’s Amish Farm that praises Anabaptism and the website seems to be an endorsem*nt of technology. If “Amish Country” chickens have no specific characteristics, it means nothing; a Rabbi, Pentecostal snake charmer and Shaolin monk could just as well raise chickens outside Lancaster and call them “Amish Country” if the farmer’s religion has no meaningful or measurable effect on the bird.
What I did in my previous life in kitchens does not make me an authority on chickens. My reasoning, assumptions and conjecture comes from more recent practical experience. I live next to and work on a 28 acre farm which, in addition to pigs, sheep, and egg layers, raises 1500 “freedom ranger” broilers on pasture annually (fed certified organic feed) which we slaughter ourselves. I am not an accredited expert, but am familiar with the breeds, physiology, life cycle, regulations, labeling requirements and spend plenty of time behind the curtain. Raising poultry for a longer period requires more feed, more labor, more pasture, more fuel, more water, infrastructure and bad weather can lift up a hut and kill 30 of them. Rhode Island Red's require at least twice as many weeks as a Cornish Cross production variety.
As for Polyface, if they slaughter fewer than 20,000 chickens annually and do not sell across state lines, they are still required to adhere to federal sanitation laws. If they sell across state lines, the regulations change. Polyface makes no claims as to what breed of broilers (meat birds) they raise (a heritage breed is worth advertising) and based on the white feathers of the chicken pictured, I would wager it is a production breed Cornish Cross.Convince me otherwise. It is not a breed that I favor and does not make Mr. Salatin a monster, those his huts look more like shanties from a Brazilian Favel (ours are tall enough to stand in, but whatever). Many producers who slaughter more than 1,000 birds on site apply for a 5A license and are inspected a few times a year to ensure that all is clean and up to snuff. The regulations change when a farmer sellsto a restaurant/store rather thandirectly to a consumer That is probably more work than most Amish are willing to commit to and co-ops relieve much of the burden (slaughtering, distribution).
A $10 chicken with a retail weight of 4lbs is not excessive for a small farm which does not have the economies of scale. The difference between a $10 and $30 chicken likely have to do with the breed, growth rate, geography (feed has to be shipped if they do not grow their own), infrastructure (building broiler huts) labor, slaughtering, fuel, etc…Without a breed, feed, growth period or growing conditions, a $10 chicken means nothing, just as a $10,000 car can’t be rated against a $30,000 car unless one knows the make, model, year, mileage and so on.
Chickens don't have to be contentious. It is best when the consumer know what they are paying for (growth hormones in poultry were banned during the Eisenhower administration, but we still like to be reminded. Like unleaded gas.)
