What does a chicken go through before it reaches the table? Watch this and eat a chicken drumstick!

When you are enjoying a chicken drumstick in your left hand and a chicken wing in your right hand, have you ever thought about where these delicious fried chicken drumsticks and grilled chicken wings come from?

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You may ask, what is the problem? If chicken legs and chicken wings don't come from chickens, do they have to come from cows?

Indeed, but I actually want to go a little deeper - **How ​​does a chicken turn from an egg into a drumstick and a wing? **Today, let's talk about the "cultivation" of drumsticks and wings.

The first step of "cultivation": hatching chicks

Chickens come from eggs, so the production process of broiler chickens must first have eggs, and these eggs are laid by broiler breeders . Broiler breeders have many generations, and the generation that can produce broiler chickens is called the parent generation. Parent broiler breeders can lay a lot of eggs - unlike commercial laying hens, most of the eggs produced by broiler breeders through free mating or artificial insemination are fertilized eggs that can hatch chicks .

Eggs hatching in a hatchery. Image taken from: USPOULTRY

After 21 days of incubation in the hatchery, the chicks will hatch. The chicks need to complete some vaccinations in the hatchery . Currently, the more efficient vaccination methods in the hatchery are mainly in-ovo vaccination, spray vaccination after hatching, and automatic injection vaccination. The immunized newborn chicks will be transported to the farm. Generally, all chickens in the same chicken house are of the same age, come from the same hatchery, and live together for the rest of their lives - this "all-in, all-out" breeding method is to ensure traceability and biosecurity levels to reduce the threat of disease or bacteria .

The second step of "cultivation": raising chickens

In order to prepare for the arrival of the chicks, the chicken farm needs to prepare the brooder house in advance to welcome the broilers into the broiler house.

There are three ways to raise chicks: cage raising, net raising and ground raising. For cage raising and net raising, a special mesh for newborn chicks should be laid on the rearing and fattening net. It should be removed after 2 to 3 weeks of age. For ground raising, a 15 to 20 cm thick bedding should be laid.

Before broilers enter the chicks, starter feed and warm water with multiple vitamins should be prepared. In the later stage, the daily diet should be specially formulated according to the nutritional needs of each stage. The chicks are covered with down and are very cute, but they have poor cold resistance. The temperature in the chicken house needs to be increased. The temperature of the newborn chicks should be 33-35 degrees Celsius, and then it should be reduced by 2 degrees Celsius every week until it drops to 18-20 degrees Celsius. The most critical environmental control for the survival rate of chicks is temperature. If the chickens are crowded, the temperature is low. If the chickens stretch their wings and open their mouths to breathe, the temperature is high. If the chickens are evenly distributed, the temperature is appropriate.

Broiler chicks in a farm. Image taken from: USPOULTRY

When the chicks arrive, they are placed in designated areas of the chicken coop. For those who have never seen a large-scale farm, they may imagine the scene of the breeder gently holding the chicks with both hands and placing them on the ground, but in reality, placing the chicken boxes close to the ground and pouring the chicks out of the boxes directly is not too rough for the weight and flexibility of the chicks. In fact, the unstable temperature and ventilation control in the transport vehicle is the most dangerous for the chicks, especially in the cold winter and hot summer days. The faster the transfer from the vehicle to the chicken coop is completed, the less stress the chicks will experience .

**Adding hormones or steroids will not make broiler chickens bigger, and the country has strict regulations. At present, there is no genetically modified "mutant chicken". **For many years, breeders have selected the healthiest and largest chickens for breeding, and combined them with feed, equipment and management to raise larger and healthier chickens. This is like human parents with outstanding height, and their children are likely to be tall.

The chicken has grown up! Image from: USPOULTRY

In addition, many people confuse hormones with antibiotics . In fact, as a broiler producer, it is completely unnecessary to add the so-called "growth-promoting hormones", but antibiotics may be used . In theory, antibiotics are not allowed to be used for a period of time before broilers are marketed (usually one week). Only when the instruments cannot detect antibiotic residues can chicken products be put on the market for sale . Now there are also many companies that pay attention to animal welfare and food safety and do not use antibiotics in the entire broiler breeding process to produce antibiotic-free chickens.

The third step of "cultivation": broiler chickens are released

White-feathered broilers usually reach market weight after six weeks, while some domestic yellow chickens or hybrid breeds have a longer breeding cycle. At present, broiler chickens in China are mainly caught manually. With the improvement of mechanization level, automatic chicken cages have also begun to be used.

The automatic chicken cage is "catching chickens". Image taken from: Cool Tech Process

After broiler chickens are released from the market, they will go through the following processes:

1

Receiving and slaughtering

The special baskets containing live chickens are taken down from the transport truck and placed on the chicken hanging platform of the slaughterhouse. In the live chicken hanging room, the hanging personnel take the live chickens out of the chicken cages by the belly in the dim light, and then hang the two chicken claws on the hanging racks of the production line. The live chickens are then electroshocked in a low-pressure water bath to make them unconscious , so that the slaughtered broilers do not feel pain, and then their throats are quickly cut to drain the blood and burn the feathers.

2

Cleaning and evisceration

This part of the processing line is highly automated. Most of the activities are performed by machines.

After the feathers are removed, the chicken is first cut by an automatic claw cutter, and then the claws are removed by a claw remover and put into a collection vehicle. Then the chicken is gutted and the internal organs are removed. The chicken that has been gutted and cleaned is called a white-striped chicken (keeping the main edible parts such as the chicken breast, chicken wings, chicken legs and the skeleton) , which is the whole chicken that we usually see in the supermarket and can be cooked directly .

Before being packaged, food safety testing is usually carried out to ensure that the chicken does not contain microorganisms such as salmonella that are harmful to humans.

Whole chickens under quarantine. Image taken from: USPOULTRY

3

Further processing and preparation

The striped chicken enters the next production line, where it is cut and deboned into different products such as wings, drumsticks or breasts. If the production line includes fine processing, the chicken can also be cooked in the factory to make products such as nuggets, patties or frozen foods.

Asians are more meticulous about eating chicken, so the chicken stomach (gizzards), chicken heart, and chicken liver will also be preserved.

The fourth step of "cultivation": becoming a chicken leg...

Once the chicken is cut into small pieces, it is packaged, bagged or boxed. Then, the chicken is shipped to grocery stores, restaurants or distribution centers in refrigerated trucks. Finally, it is sold to restaurants or our hands and made into foods such as fried chicken legs, grilled chicken wings, fried chicken nuggets, etc.

Image source: pxhere

How about it, now you know where the chicken wings and chicken legs in your hands came from, right?

Finally, many people may find those chickens in cages at the gates of elementary schools and parks. Where do they come from? Generally speaking, there are two channels. One is the by-products of breeding chickens , and the other is the chicks that are too small or deformed after hatching . But in either case, these small chicks sold in bulk are difficult to raise in an ordinary family environment. Because these chickens have not been vaccinated, they have weak disease resistance and are easily infected with diseases . In addition, if you buy commercial broiler chicks, they will easily gain weight and will not live long.

Planning and production

Author: SamKakeru, practicing veterinarian

Review丨Jinhua Xinjiang Animal Husbandry Station Agricultural Technology Extension Researcher

Planning丨Cui Yinghao

Editor: Cui Yinghao

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The article was modified on 2023-09-23

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