Marching to a different drumstick

Do happy chickens taste better? Some customers who buy poultry from Cache Creek Meat Co. of Yolo County think so. One of the owners, however, attributes the meat quality to the sunshine and fresh grass the birds enjoy on a farm that gives them even more liberty than so-called "free range" chickens, according to a story in today's Sacramento Bee.

Cache Creek Meat Co. specializes in "pastured poultry" – raising chickens outdoors and rotating them through a series of pens. The birds spend their first month indoors then they go out to pasture, where they are plumped with organic feed and build muscle roaming around their 100-square-foot pens.

According to the Bee story, "free range" can mean that a small door has been added to a barn packed with chickens. Not all "free range" chickens will actually take advantage of their freedom to go outside.

For perspective on the pastured chicken trend, writer Chris Macias spoke to Don Bell, the poultry specialist emeritus for UC Cooperative Extension.

"It's hard to do something like this for 100 percent of the market," Bell was quoted. "Organic feed has to be milled in a special mill. Some soy has to be imported from overseas."

He believes the premium price such producers can charge for the product is an issue of perception.

"If you can convince people to pay twice as much for meat, more power to you. But I don't think meat tastes different because it was raised a certain way," Bell said.

"Free-range" chickens

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