CAMILLA, Ga. — Is it any wonder they say alligator tastes like chicken?
Across the South over the past few years, chicken farmers have begun raising alligators, too, as a source of extra cash and a cold-bloodedly efficient way of getting rid of the many birds that die before they can be sent for slaughter.
Alligators have proved to be chicken-disposal machines.
Gator farming has been a good move for Mark Glass, even if it has been a lot more dangerous than raising chickens.
"If you are in the alligator business, you're going to get bitten," he said. "I got bitten by a 4 1/2-footer. I was lucky. He didn't like the taste, and he let go. If he had held on, I would have been in trouble."
About 5 percent to 6 percent of chickens raised for slaughter die of natural causes. But the disposal of dead chickens is tightly regulated by most states. Many poultry farmers use mass graves or incinerators, but those methods are subject to a myriad of regulations and can be expensive.
It is not feasible for many farmers to truck dead chickens to an incinerator or an approved burial site because the dead birds must be disposed of quickly and few farmers have enough each day to fill up a truck. And generally, any vehicle carrying dead birds must be leak-proof and be driven by someone with a license to carry dead livestock.
Alligators are prized not only for their appetite but for their meat and their hide, which is used to make belts, bags, wallets and shoes. A 4-foot alligator yields 4 to 5 pounds of meat that sells for about $6 a pound, and its hide can bring about $80.
Alligator farming has grown in the South in the past six years because of the realization of what they could do for chicken farmers.
Florida and Louisiana have raised gators long before chicken farmers figured out the advantages, but interest has spread as far north as West Virginia, where the Legislature provided $60,000 this year to combine chicken and alligator farming on an experimental basis.
Glass began raising gators in 1995 at his farm near Camilla, about 250 miles south of Atlanta. He has about 10,000 of the reptiles and slaughters about 4,000 a year, making him a minor player in the industry. He also has about 500,000 chickens.
Glass initially kept his gators in a pond, but they didn't grow as fast as he wanted, so he built four heated houses. He gives them a 90-degree environment and feeds them ground-up chicken, a dry animal feed and vitamins.
His alligators can reach the 4-foot harvest size in about 18 months, compared with three to six years for wild gators.
So far, Glass said, he has used all the earnings from his alligator farm to expand and upgrade.
"I can honestly say I haven't made any money yet, but I hope that's about to change," he said.