Re: How can you dissect a chicken? Specifically the leg and thigh area.

I have yet to find a good description of the dissection of the limbs of any 
bird.  When I was an undergraduate at Cornell in 1973 I took a veterinary 
anatomy course where we dissected a chicken (among other animals).  We used 
the "Guide to the study and dissection of the chicken" by Howard E. Evans.  
The State Veterinary College at Cornell University in Ithaca NY first 
published this book in 1961. Although this book describes the skeleton and 
the major organ systems, there is no good description of how to dissect the 
pelvic limb.  However, there is an excellent text that describes the 
anatomy of the domestic birds:  Sisson and Grosman’s The Anatomy of the 
Domestic Animals (1975, 5th Edition, Saunders Publishing Company).  
Unfortunately, this book is now out of print.  Your veterinarian might have 
a copy since it is a major reference book in Veterinary Medicine.  Call 
around and find a local veterinarian who is willing to loan you a copy.

If you really want to dissect the pelvic limb of the chicken, you have 3 
choices: a freshly killed chicken, a preserved chicken, or a cooked 
chicken.  Believe it or not, I prefer to dissect the cooked chicken it is 
actually easier to dissect than either a fresh one or a preserved one..  If 
you get a chicken from a farmer or a butcher, you have a better chance of 
being able to get one with all of the structures of the distal limb intact.  
If you bake the chicken in a covered pot at about 350 degrees for a little 
over an hour, the limbs will be lightly cooked and easier to dissect.  Let 
the chicken cool and then remove the skin from the trunk and pelvic limb.  
You should then be able to see that there are distinct lines of loose 
tissue separating individual muscles.  You can tease along these lines and 
separate the muscles and make the dissection look very similar to the 
illustrations in the book.  This will help in identifying the muscles.

While you are dissecting the muscles, don’t ignore the nerves and blood 
vessels.  In the thigh you will find one large nerve, the ischiatic nerve, 
and two smaller nerves the femoral and obturator nerves.  The femoral nerve 
innervates the muscles of the front of the thigh and the obturator nerve 
innervates the muscles of the medial thigh.  Everything else is innervated 
by the ischiatic nerve.  This nerve will branch into the tibial nerve, 
which will innervate all of the muscles on the posterior aspect of the 
limb, and the fibular nerve, which will innervate all of the anterior and 
lateral muscle below the knee.  You should also be able to see many smaller 
branches coming off of these three nerves and going into individual 
muscles.  By and large, these branches are named based on the muscle they 
go to.  For instance, the nerve to the flexor hallucis longus.  That’s a 
nerve that innervates a long muscle that flexes the first digit of the 
foot.

The blood vessels are a bit easier than the nerves because, by and large 
they are all branches of the femoral artery.  There is an obturator artery 
that accompanies the obturator nerve and provides blood to the same muscles 
that the nerve innervates.  The femoral artery will travel with the femoral 
nerve until the knee where it will dive deep and join the tibial and 
fibular nerves.

I hope you have fun with the dissection and remember, when you are 
finished, you can eat the chicken (this only works if you are using a 
cooked one).