The processing properties of spent hen and broiler chicken were investigated before and after treatment to improve texture characteristics. Each treatment consisted steaming (S) with 85℃ for 20 min, Pulsed Electric Field (PEF) with 1.5 KV/cm for 4 sec, and Super Heated Steam (SH) with an oven temp. of 300℃, a steam temp. of 350℃ for 8 min. The yield of spent hen and broiler were 66.85% and 63.80% respectively in the control, but decreased in every treatment was lowest at 61.05% in the PEF treatment (p<0.05). In the color test, L value decreased, but the a and b values increased regardless of the species of spent hen or broiler. In the test of heating loss, the S treatment of spent hen had the highest result of 45.25% but lowest of 30.66% in the SH treatment of the broiler. When it was compared with various treatments, SH after PEF treatment showed the better result in terms of heating loss than the PEF or SH treatment respectively. In the test of texture, the broiler showed the lowest hardness of 5.57 kg in the SH (p<0.05). Otherwise, the spent hen resulted in 14.08 kg of hardness in steaming after PEF, but it improved significantly to 10.73 kg in SH after PEF. In the test of 9 scored sensory evaluation of overall palatability, 7.8 point was the best score with SH treatment in the broiler. The best score in spent hen was 6.3 point which was SH after PEF treatment. With this experiment, SH after PEF was the condition in the treatments to have the better texture of spent hen.

This study was performed to investigate the phyico-chemical characteristics of breast meat from spent hens (SP) in comparison with the same part from the broilers (BR). The moisture and crude protein contents for SP were 72.56% and 24.26%, which were lower than 75.87% and 24.64% for BR. Crude fat and crude ash contents in SP were 0.45% and 1.00%, which were higher than the BR contents of 0.41% and 0.51%. The respective L, a and b value for SP were 48.61, 2.40 and 2.42, which were lower than the BR values of 49.41, 1.45 and 3.06 respectively. The pH for SP was 5.89, which was higher than pH 5.79 for BR. The WHC for SP was 50.29%, which was lower than that of BR at 62.31%. SP scored 28.04% in the heating loss test, which was significantly higher than 19.09% for BR. The shear forces for SP and BR were 4.86 kg and 1.36 kg respectively, which meant that the texture of SP was much tougher than that of BR. Hardness for SP was 8.89 kg while that of BR was 3.92 kg indicating that the SP texture is firmer than that of BR. Oleic acid was most abundant fatty acid in both samples and was at 44.15% in SP and 27.68% in BR.