This question has been nagging at me for the last couple of weeks.
We get all this beautiful hackle from chickens raised for the feathers. What the dickens do they do with the rest of the bird after they skin it for our feathers?
After all, it should still taste like chicken. As a full fledged member of PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) I really want to know!
Ever bought a can of Chicken noodle soup? Or maybe even KFC tiny little “chicken pieces”…
I’m guessing Dr. Tom Whiting has tired nearly every conceivable chicken recipe!
So, the chicken gets sold 2 or 3 times for feathers, then again for at least 1 case of chicken noodle soup, then the bones get ground up and turned into “chicken by-products” and put in dog food and I buy the danged bird AGAIN to feed the Guard Poodle.
So, on the conservative side, $30 for a saddle, another $30 for a neck, $25 for a case of soup, and $15 for a bag of dog food. That danged chicken cost me a c-note!
I gotta find me a racket like that!
There’s a great podcast interview with Thomsa Whiting here:http://www.itinerantangler.com/podcasts/podcasts/ the second podcast from the top…and he explains how they kill the rooster and what they do with them.
Roy
I seem to recall Danny Conrad saying something about incinerating the rest of the chicken. For anyone who objects, feel free to catch a rooster and try to eat it. I recommend a looooooong pressure cooking or boiling for soup.
KP - Don’t know what your are complaining about - look what it cost the chicken!!!
That was it! The coffee, through the nose, all over the monitor of my computer…ding ding ding…no more calls, we have a winner…that was good!
True, no C&R there. What’s up with that? Here we kill chickens to tie flies to catch something even dumber than a chicken and then let it go?
I’m sure that Denny sells the leftovers to the dog food plant.
Eric
Now ats funny rite there…
There is a scene in the ‘‘Shogun’’ mini series where the English navigator is given a dead chicked by the Japanese villagers. He is amazed and even distured that with thier respect for life, they would kill a bird only to use it’s feathers.
A number of years ago on an alligator hunt in Louisiana I took a picture that needs to be on every high school guidance counselor’s office wall. It was the hottest day on record in Monroe, LA, at 109. The humidity was fierce.
We went to an alligator farm to see a monster we had heard the alligator farm owner had taken. It was well over 12’ long and simply incredible. But right next to the hanging 'gator was a small “gazebo” sort of thing, though crude it kept the sun off a huge grinder and its operator.
The operator was a young, heavily-tatooed lad wearing shorts, a Superman cape and a bandana tied around his head. His hair was very short, I suppose to show the tatoos on his scalp.
He was walking into a parked 40’ van and unloading dead chickens into a wheel barrow. Then he would run the barrow to the grinder and drop the chickens in whole. The ground chickens fed out of the machine into another barrow. When full he shoved it into the pens and slopped the feed to the little gators and went back for more.
I caught an image of a chicken headed into the grinder and a nearly full van of dead chickens waiting patiently… Superman was looking miserable…
art
Have listened to the Whiting interview on askaboutflyfishing in the past [actually have it downloaded onto my Ipod]. Tom said that he always wanted to find a good use for the birds but couldn’t find anything locally. At the time of the interview, he composted them and put it on his fields for crops. Given his options, sounds like the best way to go.
Remember that an eating chicken is grown in about 40 days and a chicken grown for feathers is about 9 to 10 months old iirc. Too tough for you and I to eat.