Tweeters,

Here is my two and half cents. In my experience with game birds, those that fly the least have the whitest (and best tasting) breast meat. These would include pheasants, quail, turkeys, and chukars. These birds do most of their moving around by running or walking, using flight as a last resort to escape predators or from moving to and from roost sites. However, I have never looked much at the legs of small gallinaceous birds to see if they are dark like a turkey or chicken because there is too little meat to be of interest in consuming. Of the gallinaceous birds I have experience with, the one with the darkest breast meat is the Gray Partridge. Interestingly, these birds are more apt to move around their habitat by flying good distances rather than walking. I have witnessed flocks of Gray Partridge moving from ridges to valleys and visa versa without being pursued by a hunter or predator. They simply cover more ground throughout their daily cycles by flying. Consquently, their breast meat is much darker and stronger tasting than the other upland birds.

Ducks, geese, cranes and other long distance flyers have very dark, highly vascular breast meat as a means for long distance movements.

Jeff Kozma

Yakima

j c r underscore 5105 at charter dot net
----- Original Message -----
From: Suzanne Tomassi Kaputa
To: levineb at bsd405.org ; tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 9:39 AM
Subject: RE: [Tweeters] White meat versus dark question


My understanding is that a fatigue-resistant slow-twitch muscle called Type IIA (or is it B?) is an intermediate between Type I and II (slow/fast twitch) muscle fibers in some species (no idea if it holds true for gallinaceous birds). However, I thought the intermediate type was capillary rich (i.e., red). And I'm dragging this up from the depths of my memory...


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Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 09:16:01 -0800
From: LevineB at bsd405.org
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Tweeters] White meat versus dark question


Tweeters,

Thought I?d post this question that was asked of me from a high school Biology class I teach. Why do turkeys have both white and dark meat? My understanding has always been that dark meat has more myoglobin proteins that transfer oxygen more efficiently to the areas where muscles are used more frequently. Hence this would explain why the legs of birds like turkeys and chickens would be dark meat and their breast meat would be white. But, a friend who is a hunter has told me that doesn?t fit for some gallinaceous birds like quail, or chukar which have only lighter colored meat.

Anyone have an answer for the group?



Barry Levine

Seattle

levineb at fastmail.fm




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