Tip of the month
Chickens can adjust their feed intake depending on the quality of the feed they are offered. This means if offered a low protein and/or low energy feed, they will consume more feed each day to try and reach their daily requirements. If their feed quality is too low, their daily growth starts to be compromised. Choose a feed with adequate energy and protein levels to support the rapid growth rates of meat-type chicks, such as NRM Meat bird Crumble which contains 20 percent crude protein.
The emphasis in the NZ poultry industry is on intensive growing of earlymaturing, feed-efficient, hybrid meat chickens to provide a cheap source of protein. The chicken you can buy in a supermarket is fully-grown and just 32-42 days old when it is killed and processed.
If you raise a commercial meat breed (Cobb or Ross) and feed it on a commercial diet, you’ll get something that tastes very similar to the supermarket option, but it will cost you more to produce.
The big difference, if you get the feed and growth rates right, is in the flavour.
Flavour, texture and fat cover increases with age. Young meat-producing livestock – poultry, veal or lamb – don’t have much fat, or time to build up texture. Any animal that has time to grow slowly will lay down more fat, which is where most of the flavour comes from. If your birds are freerange, they will also be exercising, adding muscle, and eating a wider diet, which helps to develop flavour.