Chicken Soup Magic

An ad I wrote last spring for our processed chicken..... at the time we were getting $6/lb on the regular birds and $9/lb on the dark birds.  -AR

Free-range heritage breed and dark flesh chickens locally grown and processed for your culinary creations. This will not be a typical grocery store eating experience! 

These are extra roosters from hatches last fall. We've been tinkering around with ways to increase carnosine (ie chicken soup magic) in meat birds. There's a relationship between darkness of flesh (melanin levels) and carnosine levels but the challenge is the birds with the highest (by far!) carnosine levels also happen to be small....as in silkies. While we're waiting for the research to tease apart all the different aspects to fibromelanism, we're exercising a bit of homegrown selective breeding - on behalf of chicken soup lovers wherever they may be 

Dark flesh chickens have a slightly different flavor and have high levels of taurine and carnosine - ie "chicken soup magic".  Information about cooking heritage meat is below.

We hatched these birds and then fed and watered them daily for the last 5 months - trudging through wind and sleet snow, pouring rain and deep mud. They've slowly grown eating a diet of hand blended whole grains through the winter and wandering about eating tender grass and dandelion greens (and the occasional tasty worm) this spring. When the time was right the birds were taken to a small USDA inspected, family operated processing facility in Garnett, Kansas

I typically squeeze 3 meals of of each bird - baked chicken for meal 1, pulled chicken for casseroles for meal 2, and a rich soup made from thick chicken jelly for meal 3, plus several quarts of high quality broth for comfort food.  

Cooking traditionally raised chickens is different from cooking with industrially raised hybrid broilers. Recommendations from Heritage Chef Steve Pope. 

The US Ark of Taste is a catalog of over 200 delicious foods in danger of extinction. By promoting and eating Ark products we help ensure they remain in production and on our plates. http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/ark_of_taste/

Slow Food KC http://www.slowfoodkc.org/

     

Aikikos

These are BLUE eggs from a line I've been selling and hatching for several years. I'm trying to keep the dark skin and blue eggs while increasing the number of white offspring and (keep your fingers crossed) hopefully carry forward a unique vocalization.  The project is in it's 4th year.

A bit of genetic history...because I just can't help it... The first hen was named Aikiko.  She was just a sweet little wheaten hen from a hatchery mix but she laid these delicate, faintly blue eggs and a nice beard.  

Her daughter "Etsuko" is a product of Aikiko crossed with a black silkie roo (named "Katie").  Etsuko is a black smooth feathered,clean legged hen who lays turquoise eggs. Etsuko's babies tend to have feet like silkies and are occasionally are dark skinned and always bearded.  

Her son "Romeo" is a product of Aikiko crossed with a nearly rumpless wheaten araucana (?) named "Rupert". Romeo was light skinned with a feather pattern similar to silver duckwing.  

Etsuko and Romeo together produced both the roosters I've carried forward into the breeding project this year. There are details about these  Yukidama and Zulema in the description below.  

Currently the Aikiko house has three hens and two roosters: 

Etsuko, Etsuko's grand-daughter "Orchid" (blue salmon daughter of Ocoee x Tuco - a Silkied Ameraucana) and a small gray wheaten easter banty hen named "Opal" are in the breeding area with the Yukidama and Zulema.  

Yukidama is a homozygous recessive white, rumpless, dark skinned, snowball hatched in time for New Year 2012).  He descends from Aikiko x Rupert - a nearly rumpless "true" aruacana.  

Zulema is a black and gold rumpless with very dark skin.  In  addition to being a sweetheart, Zulema makes a very interesting sound when he's trying to impress the ladies.  He goes "wupp wupp wupp". It's different from any others I've ever heard and I'm curious as to how this vocalization carries into future generations.