Live poultry in Westbury
The price list at Westbury Live Poultry Market includes eight varieties of chickens plus guinea hen, rabbit, duck, quail and squab. (Aug. 19, 2013) Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
Noodling around the industrial back roads of Westbury looking for a tile store, I came across Westbury Live Poultry Market, which has occupied this spot for 12 years.
The store isn’t much more than a garage filled with metal crates full of birds, clucking and nibbling corn. There are a variety of chickens — different breeds, roosters and hens, young and old — as well as turkeys, ducks, guinea hens and rabbits. Quail, squab and pheasant and other exotica are available on request. Chicken prices are all less than $3 a pound; nothing costs more than $4 a pound. The price includes having your bird slaughtered and plucked.
Owner Lee DaCosta said that the store catered to immigrant and first-generation Americans — Hispanic, Chinese, Arab — who have a tradition of buying live poultry, though he says he also supplies rabbits to local Italian restaurants and soup hens to traditional Jewish cooks.
I haven’t much experience cooking just-butchered fowl, but I’ll be heading back to Westbury soon to pick up a few birds. I’ll report back.
Westbury Live Poultry is at 40 Urban Ave., Westbury, 516-334-7599.
