American families are getting smaller and yet chickens are getting larger
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As we begin 2017, Americans can look back at 2016 as yet another year with record-high chicken consumption—an average of 89.6 pounds per person. That’s more than three times as much as our grandparents ate.
Chickens we eat today are twice as big as they were 60 years ago. In 1955, the average weight of chickens sold on market was 3.07 pounds, while the number for the first half of 2016 was 6.18 pounds, according to National Chicken Council, a nonprofit trade organization based in Washington, D.C.
Firstly, chicken breeds today are more cost-efficient than 60 years ago. In order to shorten production cycle and cut cost, the selective breeding for broilers — chickens raised for meat rather than eggs — prefers faster growth rate and higher feed-to-meat ratio — meaning the pounds of feed it takes to gain one pound of meat.
The time it took to grow a newly-hatched chicken for market has been cut half since the 1990s to only less than 7 weeks from 16 weeks in 1925, data from the National Chicken Council showed. And it only takes less than half feed to get the same amount of meat.
Animated GIF by Stefie Gan.
The trend started with the 1948 contest that invited farmers nationwide to develop the “Chicken of Tomorrow” with specific goals — bigger, meatier, faster growth. As a result, Arbor Acre breed, the crossbreed of the two winners, has become the grandparents of most commercial meat chicken we eat today worldwide.
There were massive genetic differences as a result of selective breeding by raising chicken breeds from different eras under exact same conditions, a 2014 study by researchers at the University of Alberta, Canada, observed. The result was stunning: At the same age, the 2005 breed had grown to about four times as heavy as the 1957 breed, despite being fed the same food.
Secondly, chicken companies have also achieved higher efficiency in their raising process — both in terms of quantity and size — through economy of scale and evolved poultry science.
“Chicken was incredibly expensive and largely considered a luxury good,” said Emelyn Rude, author of the 2016 book “Tastes Like Chicken: A History of America’s Favorite Bird,” “In the 1950s and before, chickens were only sold in whole form, which entailed an incredibly labor intensive process of butchering and processing before they could be cooked and eaten at home.”
Nowadays, most chickens spend their whole lives in a small confinement together with thousands of others from birth to death, with no possibility to roam or even move. They are raised to reach the “slaughter weight” as fast as possible through excessive feeding and lack of exercise. Although hormones and steroids in the poultry industry are prohibited by the Food and Drug Administration, antibiotics are regularly used by farms as growth agents.
“Scientists know more about chicken nutrition requirements than any other creature on the planet, and so advanced chicken feed helps contribute to their tremendous growth rate,” said Rude.
Thirdly, the American diet has experienced a dramatic shift toward processed food. As more pre-cooked and convenience products became available, bland, cheap and healthy chicken became the perfect item to feature in these type of meals, and it made financial sense for manufacturers to raise bigger chickens for TV dinners and other prepared foods. “Most cookbooks starting in the 1970s only call for boneless, skinless chicken breast, a product that was virtually non-existent before the advent of chicken processing,” Rude told MarketWatch.
Why did the article end so abruptly? It was just getting interesting……maybe a part 2 coming?
That is the entire article.
Perhaps you don’t know how to do the down scrolly thingy?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-chickens-are-twice-as-big-today-as-they-were-60-years-ago-2017-01-06/print
Two days ago my wife bought home a turkey breast from Safeway.
It’s about the size of a medium ham. I kid you not.
OMG, at that rate, in another generation chickens will rule the world!
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We’ve had one in the white house for the past 8 years ….
They found that the Negro chickens reproduced 3 times quicker than ordinary chickens.
Do kneegrows walk like chickens? Or, do chickens walk like kneegrows?
I gots to know.
Both walk in the street.
Both cross the road to the other side…………
Black Chickens Matter.
The white chickens, Leghorns, are the most efficient layers of all, producing the MOST eggs. Of course, chickens really ARE racist and pecking order is more than just a cute saying.
Substitute American humans for chickens in this article.
And, where is the ‘Advanced Human Feed’ ? Why concentrate on chickens? Think of what humans could accomplish if we are twice our size.
Think Soylent Green.
I’d like to know the nutritional profile of the new improved chicken compared to the former model.
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The VFD effectively gutted most sub-therapeutic drugs, so the vast majority of increases these days are from better feed techniques and nutritional understanding.
That being said I remember when a single chicken didn’t go very far. Nowadays I get one and my wife and I have to get inventive to use up all the meat before it goes bad.
Its even worse when I get free birds out of the control groups we run, those butterballs often tip the scales at 9 pounds. Thats a big damn bird.
“Scientists know more about chicken nutrition requirements than any other creature on the planet, and so advanced chicken feed helps contribute to their tremendous growth rate,” said Rude.
It’s called Growth Hormones. Not good. And just because the packaging may say Fed Hormone Free feed doesn’t mean they aren’t injected directly into the bird.
Holy Shit!!! Goldman Sachs has taken over the government and you bunch of retards are talking about fukkin chickens. Figures………..
Down here in my little village (cue in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6UMtWi5rX0), well, (cue in John Houseman) “We raise chickens the old-fashioned way: we steal ’em”.
This is why we have a chicken obesity problem. They’re lazy.
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The chicken that flew to you in jars from Missouri had worked hard for every lean ounce.
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If chickens are that much bigger how come “Large” eggs at the store are about the size mediums used to be… & have some strange watery stuff in the whites that didn’t use to be there?
Meat birds and laying hens are totally different breeds…. iirc, eggs size has always graded based on weight. Believe it or not, those meat birds are almost 2x the size of a White Leghorn (the most common layer)
I raise chickens, so my opinion MIGHT be worth something.
(Suggestion: If you think it is NOT worth something, simply scroll through my comment here and the glib afterthought I will have once it is posted that is not worth the edit, but seemed funny to me at the time. By doing this every time you see my name, you will not have to read another word I write. Presto!!! No safe space necessary.)
For hard cell walls, dark orange nucleus and healthy cytoplasm, chickens need some really fertile soil in their diet. This is because they need some mighty good bacteria to keep their “innards” working correctly. They need grit and salts and nutrients we cannot imagine to make eggs. While their own fecal matter contains precious nutrients for gardening, they are omnivores and prefer (and need) better quality crap.
Upon leaving their pen around, though and into my legs standing at the open door (I GET NO RESPECT), they race to the bunny hutch, where I’ve dropped the tarp wrapped beneath overnight to to catch turf-building pellets. While rabbit waste, like deer, needs almost no composting to fertilize soil, a little “pre” decomposing by the hens usually brings out lots of worms and grubs conditioned to work their way up to the feast each morning. When necessary, I will rake and collect the fallen turf-building soil along with the hay I insulate bunny pens for the dual purpose hay provides. The soil I spread on my old friend’s resting place will blend with the last load in the coming winter storms and give me a wonderful base for Zoysia grass and a tiny memorial garden those of us who miss her can visit on our way to town. She asked me to stop butchering my hens when they stop laying. After she died, I complied. If I buy them as meat chickens, they get processed. But, if I name them anything but Jar Jerry then they get lost to predator, the elements or old age. I burned Annie in the burn pit in August.
My oldest pair, Olivia and Chloe, are almost seven years old (as Annie would have been!), given to me by a cousin to “jar” since they weren’t laying for him any more. His wife hates chickenshit in the yard and his poor girls are forced to live in a ten-by-ten cage in the middle of his piece of Ozark paradise. When I built my front flower beds two years ago, I stopped by his place 15 miles away for a truck load of organic fertilizer that had accumulated in the thousand-dollar chickenhouse he’d built from a kit. He gave me his four oldest hens because they all just “up and quit laying after a couple of years seems like.”
Olivia and Chloe are two of those hens and as soon as they got here and moved into the cardboard U-Haul box I covered with plastic, they started laying within a week. I got meat chickens last spring along with four new layers. The neighbor’s rooster joined us for a short time until I named him “Three Quarts” after he flogged me in the chicken pen twice.
Chickens are huge because they tube feed them exactly the nutrients necessary to make them fat sitting/standing in one spot and the waste exits their bodies via another tube. Their entire lives are devoted to growing as large a breast as possible in as little time as possible. A pretty good gig if you can get it, eh?
The egglayers produce an egg every 17 to 18 hours… their body temperatures maintained by IV fluids, including hydrogen peroxide to ensure their heart operates at the best egg laying rate or something along that lines. It is really creepy and when I first saw it at the Tyson plant in Arkansas as a young woman, I was horrified.
The eggs are weak cells, with artifically hardened shells that contain watery, weak cytoplasm.
My chickens’ eggs fortified with the calcium, protein and enzymes of a thousand bugs digested daily. My chickens “dress” out small. I skin them to limit the fat on the meat and usually crockpot them overnight (with bone and neck) to debone and then process for longterm storage. When I lived in OKC, I purchased “farm-raised” hens for 5 bucks each and put them in jars after attending the very important HOW TO pressure can meat lecture and demonstration.
Out of seven hens, I still get 4 or 5 eggs daily, with one greenish egg from my weird looking Larriette Bird every single day, even yesterday when the temperature was 14 degrees F! Chloe and Olivia are still keeping on. The others were a little stringy, but after a good pressure cooking, made good dumplings.
Those hens I bought in Oklahoma filled three quart jars EACH, with enormous bosoms that produced a full pound of white breast meet EACH. It was delicious and hopefully, I processed most of the chemicals out of the meat.
My hens will barely fill a quart jar after the first year. They fatten up nicely the first year but after they learn the joys of egglaying, their days are devoted to scrounging for bugs and worms in the garden soil where I haul the bunny pellets weekly. In fact, they IGNORE the layer feed I buy to supplement their diet just in case unless it is raining and they have to stay inside.
And that’s pretty much all I got to say about that.
Thanks Maggie!
New layers tend to produce small eggs, as do certain breeds. The small eggs are treasured by the Chinese, who believe some whacked out thing. They also eat hundred year old eggs for some damn reason too.
I suspect science will be able to genetically modify chickens to get rid of unnecessary parts like bones and feet so the chicken doesn’t ‘waste’ food growing them. It will just be a succulent pile of meat with a few internal organs that can be used as cat food.
That won’t happen…..gotta have those handles (legs) to gnaw on and wings to dip
Something else changed in my long life. As a kid in the 40s, everybody had yard chickens for cheap food but now there are so many hungry diseased but protected (if not by laws then by big nosed liberals) foxes, coyotes, eagles, dogs, cats, opossums, etc that even really fast chickens that can also fly like Bantams have to be kept inside “Fort Knox” quality pens; that means they ain’t cheap to keep and feed no more. Also, folks usually had an outhouse; and a dug out and diked-up stream fishing hole producing cheap fish; can’t do either anymore thanks to all the stupid Useless Idiot voters; hope ya’ll choke someday on your own stupid rules, stupid commie bitches.
The meat birds used today are so massive b/c they all have double-recessive genes for uncontrolled growth. I researched this a few years ago to see if I could approximate the breeding so that I could raise my own, since their genetic stock is proprietary. I discovered they are bred by crossing grandparents with the recessive genes and then those offspring lay the eggs that hatch as the freakazoid dino-birds (they kind of lumber/walk sideways). This is why its almost impossible to re-create their lineage b/c they all come from genetically “defective” stock. And yes, I call them defective b/c those recessive genes cause them to almost never stop growing, like gigantism does in humans (think Andre the Giant). They actually say its inhumane to let those meat birds get past the age of 12 weeks, b/c their bodies cant handle the stress of growing. I actually saw what happens when you let them grow to the ripe age of 1 year…. took some birds into the butchering place, and a guy had dropped off 3 of these… creatures…. to be processed. They were LITERALLY the size of turkeys! Their breasts were wider than they were tall! I was aghast.
The second or third year we raised backyard chickens in Oklahoma about ten years ago, we got a dozen hybrid meat birds. We fed them longer than the recommended 8 weeks, hoping for even larger birds, but one had a heart attack and died on the way from the food to the nesting area three or four feet away. (At two weeks, the fat little “meatballs” were no longer able to climb the three steps to the roosting area, so we made a temporary pen where they could eat and nest without having to overexert themselves. I suppose it was economical, having to feed them only for two months to get 3 to 4 pounds of tender predominantly white meat. However, I found them so pathetic waddling around their tiny pen always eating, eating, eating with the occasional sip from the water dish. Nick said he liked raising them like that, but I didn’t. I think my happy chickens taste a lot better at about 20 weeks after a wonderful short life munching bugs and digging around in rabbit pellets. By then, I know the best layers in my opinion and have my eye on the plumpest of the ladies. My glib comment is that my animals live a wonderful life right up until the very last second. Of course, now that I have rabbits, more hens get reprieved than not.
The hybrid “meatball” chickens are NOT welcome here. Yuck. What a genetic monstrosity.
Deer live wonderful lives too, better than any factory farmed animal, and they’re delicious. Low fat lean meat, no hormones, no antibiotics. I do want to start raising rabbits too.
I wonder if it’s just me but chicken taste disgusting now. I can’t eat it. Especially those precooked Rotisserie Chickens that you get in grocery stores. They make me gag. I used to love chicken. A lot of fish taste disgusting to me now also. Maybe it’s just me or maybe they really are disgusting.
I used to love chicken as well but the taste became so bad that I quit eating it entirely…….then we discovered locally produced, hormone/antibiotic free, free range chicken and turkey. They look positively scrawny compared to their commercially raised cousins but the taste is as good as I remember it. My money stays local and I can get a few free buckets of manure too.
Well, we have only been buying at least free range and sometimes organic chickens here in New Zealand and they are smaller than that. They also taste like chicken did in the U.S. in the 1960s when I was a kid, a distinct and strong chicken flavor. My wife thought something was wrong with her chicken at a restaurant over here shortly after we moved over (she was six months behind me having the great fun of closing out stuff over there). Well, I tasted her chicken and said it tastes like chicken is supposed to (and used to in the U.S.) The eggs here are also extremely yellow yolked and very strong in flavor. Last time I was in the U.S. I would not eat the eggs I ordered at a well regarded bagel place in the north metro Atlanta area, tasted really “off” yet everyone else was scarfing theirs up.
My kids refuse to eat eggs whenever we travel, b/c the yolks are so pale and tasteless. The yolk color is based on what kind of diet the layers are fed. I guess appox 98% of eggs in the US are produced by hens confined in giant barns that are only fed a precise diet of corn, soymeal, and just enough trace elements/nutrients to get them thru their first year of laying. My chickens get to go outside any day of the year to forage within a 1/4 acre electric netting pen, so their eggs have dark yolks and taste great. But I’ll tell you, if you are looking for maximum efficiency, the big chicken operations have it down to an exact science…. and although people say “that’s awful” when they see the conditions in those barns, they still buy the cheap eggs 99 to 1 over small producers like myself. So I guess $$$ maters most to folks.
We sell eggs for $5 a dozen. Whole chickens are $25 each. You don’t get a lot of customers at that price but the ones you do have are faithful because of the difference in flavor and aesthetics. A fresh egg doesn’t have to be refrigerated if you don’t wash it, there is a natural covering that protects it from the air and it will sit on your counter for several weeks (although it is, of course, better to eat anything fresh). As the egg decomposes over time the albumen becomes watery, that’s why the majority of the ones you pick up in stores or get at a restaurant are always very watery. They’re old. The average time between egg collection and consumption of factory raised eggs in the US is about 24 days. A fresh egg has an albumen that stands up about 3/4 of an inch and clings to the yolk like a fat kid in an inner tube. The color of the yolk is derived by beta carotene in grass or feed. Commercial feeds have little or no beta carotene so they often add coloring agents to give them some degree of color, but most often they are pale yellow and have little flavor. A real free range egg yolk at peak season is pumpkin colored and almost gluey in consistency and very flavorful. The best time to hard boil an egg is after it has been sitting out for a couple of weeks. Fresh eggs do not peel away from the shell.
We raise both layers and meat birds, we switch up breeds of layers every year- two types so it’s easier to cull spent layers from the flock the second year. The spent layers become either soup chickens or go into cacciatore type dishes because their flesh is more muscled. It is also much more flavorful but it doesn’t roast well. The best trick for a really well-cooked chicken is always low temperature plus time. I stick a roaster in the oven at 8 am 200 degrees covered up tight in a roasting pan and by dinner time you butter its surface, place it under a high heat to brown the skin for a few minutes and it it has literally cooked in it’s own juices and falls off the bone. The drippings make a great gravy by adding butter, a flour roux, some white wine or hard cider and a little maple syrup. Nothing like it. I can slaughter and prepare a bird in about 30 minutes. I usually stick them in a bucket of ice water and salt to brine them for a day or two before cooking, this imparts a nice flavor and delivers a juicier bird, never dried out. I can part up a bird for frying in a minute or two. We usually cook the dark meat separately for one dish and do the breasts for lunch meat, chicken parmesan, picatta, etc.
Birds raised in industrial farming are fed a single feed their entire life and it contains high levels of soy (bad for males, full of estrogen) and corn, both GMO’s. The feed is made up of an additional combination of wood pulp, manure (true) and other waste products. They live in confined conditions where they barely move, huff the off-gasses of manure they perpetually stand in, are exposed to little or no natural light (vitamin D deficient) and are all given antibiotics, no exceptions due to pathogen levels you couldn’t imagine, living in the same housing for hundreds of generations. The reason they are so cheap is because the Big Ag producers are all subsidized heavily via taxes (yet another hidden cost) handled and slaughtered almost exclusively by low-cost immigrant labor that is overwhelmingly illegal at another cost to American consumers who must subsidize their entitlements and the care/education/housing of their offspring. The chickens are not exactly handled in what anyone would call humane conditions and the time between harvest and consumption can be anywhere from a couple of weeks to a year. I am not sure why anyone who understands that would ever want to eat one even on a dare regardless of the price, but different strokes for different folks I suppose.
Of course, the upside of having your own is that we eat chicken at least once a week as a primary meal and daily in all of its other forms- eggs, puddings, stir fry, sandwiches, in baked goods, as stock and soup, mayonnaise, custards, deviled, egg salads, etc. The protein in them is excellent, the flavor and freshness a huge appeal and every morning the roosters let me know that the Sun will be along shortly. The flock always looks forward to seeing me, they provide an excellent source of manure and if I want to spread soil around all I have to do is drop a load in the desired spot, spread some feed on it and let the chickens rake it out as if I’d hired a Zen gardener. Any chickens that die of natural causes go right to the dogs or the hogs who can safely eat it, bones included (an uncooked chicken bone is springy and will not pose a danger when eaten- never give a dog a cooked chicken bone).
I can’t think of many animals that are easier to care for, pose less of a burden, return such a high degree of nutrition per calorie spent in caring and feeding and give more pure joy just for their being around than a chicken. In that way, they are probably the most valuable livestock on the farm.
It is fun looking at the catalogs of the various types of chickens you can get. The white leghorns lay some giant eggs like machines for such a small bird.The idea is that they eat less and produce so well.
There are also meat chickens that are more normal than those poor mutant birds that just sit there.They are so heavy that they break legs or have heart attacks.
I always fed my chickens vegetables instead of the crap in feed bags.You sure can see and taste the difference. Bugs and worms help also. A chicken that gets to run around and live a bit while eating good stuff is best.
Chicken size seems directly proportional to size of the dwellers in the Thirty Blocks of Squalor. Coincidence? I think not.
As does the increasing dominance of fried chicken on the menu in almost ALL restaurants seem correlated to dweller size. Don’t even think of the racist implications, but of the genetic transfer of chicken hormone to people! Think of the poor children being fed growth hormones in their diet of soylent chicken, derivatives of cyanide in their candy bars in the form of aspartame, which is a sugar substitute, but is ALSO added to many forms of candy. Hmmm… could aspartame be addictive?
A true free range chicken whose diet was supplemented with natural grains and crumble made from cornmeal and old milk or whatever liquid tastes better than most can imagine. And the broth from cooking one of those beauties?
Magnificient!
I raise a breed called cinnamon queen, cross between Rhode Island white hen and Rhode Island Red rooster. They lay +- 340 very large brown eggs annually each year when mature. The eggs are bright orange yolks with a flavor that is unmatched IMHO.
They are very friendly, love kicking around the garden and yard and require very little maintenance. We feed scraps mostly with scratch grains in a 40×100 enclosed grass aviary.
Yummy