Most grocery store chicken breasts are quite large. Once I was at the Arkansas State Fair, and saw some of the chickens from which these oversized cuts come from.

A carpet of straw was dotted with white chickens and their child handlers. Some of the birds were so front-heavy that they couldn’t stand – which meant their feathers quickly became encrusted with feces. Others birds would wobble to a stand, take a few uncertain steps, and then collapse.

One of the mothers told me, with a repulsed look on her face, that the large poultry processors will only accept chickens of a certain size, because that’s what their machines are designed to process. Those who breed normal-sized birds have few places to sell their animals.

Let’s hope that none of these chickens are marketed as “free-range.”