B. Mastering Poultry

Chickens are odd birds. Their puny wings have no more chance to lift their girth in prolonged flight than a human’s arms do. Their legs are those of a sumo wrestler, and their Mae West breasts are better suited to take to a sauce than the skies. Bred away from their ornithological roots, chickens, turkeys, and geese are now primarily culinary animals.

Commercial poultry is raised to develop at lightning speed on minimum feed. Currently it takes only 8 pounds of feed to grow a chicken to 4 pounds in just 6 weeks—a supreme feat of animal husbandry that results in meat that is remarkably consistent and inevitably bland, due to the fact that the animals spend their brief lives packed into cages where they get hardly any exercise. When you add in the fact that poultry raised under these conditions must be pumped with antibiotics to keep its meat wholesome, it’s easy to understand the groundswell of popularity for free-range poultry. Although the term brings forth images of chickens and turkeys gamboling through fields, “free-range” technically means only that the birds have access to an open pen for a few hours a day. Unfortunately, most chickens and turkeys, being hopeless underachievers, fail to take advantage of this opportunity.