Chicken wings are the collagen heavyweight, packing roughly 28 grams of collagen per 100 grams of raw weight. That’s significantly more than drumsticks (19 g), necks (17 g), or backs (16 g). But wings aren’t the only part worth knowing about. Chicken feet, skin, and cartilage are all collagen-rich in different ways, and the best choice depends on whether you’re making broth, eating the meat, or looking for a specific type of collagen.
Wings: The Highest Collagen by Weight
Wings contain about 28.4 grams of collagen per 100 grams of raw weight, which puts them well ahead of every other part of the bird. The reason comes down to anatomy: wings have a high ratio of skin, connective tissue, and small joints relative to their overall size. That connective tissue is where collagen concentrates, and wings have proportionally more of it than meatier cuts like breasts or thighs.
Interestingly, wing tips are not the collagen source you might expect. They’re about 92% keratin, a completely different structural protein, and contribute very little usable collagen. The collagen is concentrated in the drumette and flat sections of the wing, where tendons, skin, and cartilage meet bone.
Chicken Feet: The Collagen Powerhouse
Chicken feet are almost entirely connective tissue, tendons, and skin with very little muscle. About 70% of the total protein in chicken feet is collagen, which makes them one of the most collagen-dense animal products available. While the per-100-gram collagen figure varies depending on preparation, their protein is overwhelmingly collagen rather than the mix of proteins you’d find in a chicken breast or thigh.
This is why chicken feet are a go-to ingredient for making rich, gelatinous stock. When simmered for hours, the collagen in feet breaks down into gelatin, producing a broth that sets into a firm jelly when cooled. That jelly-like consistency is a visible sign of high collagen extraction. Even adding just a few feet to a pot of regular chicken stock dramatically increases its body and gelatin content.
How Other Cuts Compare
Beyond wings and feet, here’s how the rest of the bird stacks up for collagen content per 100 grams of raw weight:
- Drumsticks: 19.1 g. The tendons running along the bone and the skin contribute meaningful collagen, making dark-meat leg pieces a solid middle-ground option.
- Necks: 17.3 g. Chicken necks are small but dense with vertebrae, cartilage, and connective tissue. They’re a traditional choice for stock-making in many cuisines.
- Backs: 15.7 g. The backbone and rib area contain a fair amount of connective tissue and are often the cheapest part of the bird, making them economical for broth.
- Skin: Chicken skin is rich in collagen regardless of where on the body it comes from, though the breast and thigh skin are the pieces most commonly available.
- Breast meat: The lowest collagen content of any cut. Breast muscle is lean and has relatively little connective tissue, which is why it dries out easily and doesn’t contribute much gelatin to a broth.
A general rule holds across the bird: the more connective tissue and the less pure muscle a cut contains, the more collagen it has. Parts that move a lot (wings, legs) or that are mostly structural (feet, necks, backs) beat out the large muscle groups every time.
Skin and Cartilage as Collagen Sources
Chicken skin deserves separate attention because it’s collagen-rich no matter which cut it’s attached to. The skin is essentially a sheet of collagen wrapped in fat. When you roast a chicken and the skin turns crispy, you’re denaturing that collagen with heat. When you simmer it in liquid, you’re dissolving it into gelatin.
Cartilage, particularly the keel cartilage from the breastbone, is a source of Type II collagen. This is a different form than the Type I collagen found in skin and tendons. Type II collagen is the primary structural protein in cartilage throughout the body, including human joints, which is why chicken cartilage extracts are used in some joint-health supplements. If you’ve ever gnawed on the soft, rubbery piece at the end of a chicken bone, that’s cartilage loaded with Type II collagen.
Getting the Most Collagen From Broth
If your goal is to extract collagen by making bone broth, the parts you choose matter enormously. A broth made from wings and feet will set into a solid gel in the refrigerator. A broth made from breast bones alone will be thin and watery by comparison.
The amino acid profile of chicken bone broth reflects its collagen content. A well-made chicken broth delivers about 4 mg of glycine, 2.4 mg of proline, and 2.2 mg of hydroxyproline per gram of broth. These three amino acids are the building blocks of collagen and are present in much higher concentrations in collagen-rich broth than in regular meat.
For the richest possible stock, combine wings and feet as your base. The wings provide the highest raw collagen density, while the feet offer an extremely high collagen-to-everything-else ratio that maximizes gelatin extraction. Adding necks and backs rounds things out. Simmer low and slow for at least four to six hours to give the collagen time to fully break down into gelatin. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when the cooled broth wobbles like Jell-O.
Chicken Collagen vs. Other Sources
Chicken collagen tends to break down into smaller peptide fragments than bovine (cow) collagen, which may make it slightly easier for the body to absorb. Chicken is also one of the few common dietary sources of Type II collagen, since most beef and pork collagen is Type I and Type III. This distinction matters primarily if you’re interested in joint support, where Type II collagen has been the focus of clinical research.
Poultry in general tends to offer more collagen-concentrated parts than beef or pork, simply because chickens have more skin, cartilage, and small joints relative to their body size. A whole chicken broken down into parts gives you feet, wing tips, necks, and backs that are all disproportionately rich in connective tissue compared to the equivalent scraps from a cow.