Growth rate chart

[elly12]

Hi All Poultry Lovers!
I've been looking around for a good chart with growth rates for heritage chicken breeds. Like a comparison chart of how much weight they gain while they grow. I'm making my own one with the breeds I have, but I was surprised with how much difference there is between each breed!
Thanks Everyone!

 

[TinyBirds]

I need one too! Most threads I read so far seem to indicate white rocks grow fastest, but we dont want white birds so I'm trying australorp and standard cornish and saipan. The saipan are only 1 week old but at this point they are tiny. Mainly i was just curious if they could fight off a hawk once the roosters get big, even if they end up growing slow. A few years ago we had blrw and they had nice breast meat compared to others we ate. Even the bantam wyandotte boys were nice for eating and they were so easy to process. I am looking for a chart too with more breeds included.

 

[Folly's place]

It's difficult to generalize about breeds, because there's huge variability between strains of the same breeds, depending on the breeder/ hatchery sources. Look at the breed standard, and expect that groups of birds will not all reach breed weight goals. I had some nice buff Rocks, by the way, consider them. Cornish and Jersey Giants grow slowly but make very nice meat birds too. Wyandottes are really good; I order from hatcheries, and have found that the very popular colors of Rocks and Wyandottes will tend to be smaller than the less common strains, as the barred Rocks compared to the buff, and the better size of the BLRWs. Mary

 

[AndyAmbiguous]

Any update on this? I'd love to see a chart with even just broad averages to know I'm on track or not.

 

[iwltfum]

The problem with your request is something you've already pointed out in your original post. All breeds are different. The reason you can find charts like that for Cornish X or freedom rangers is because big money has spent time funding research to create the data.

I like your idea of creating your own chart. I would encourage you to post your findings here. It might help others. But any research like that is going to be on someones personal dime and they may or may not want to share that with others since it could also be monetarily beneficial for someone to keep it to themselves or sell it to interested parties.

 

[Molpet]

https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fnc12-866/
Guy did a few hatchery heritage

 

[Ridgerunner]

https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fnc12-866/
Guy did a few hatchery heritage

Interesting chart but a few things to bear in mind. These chicks were from a "local" hatchery. Each hatchery has a different person determining which birds get to breed and they can have different criteria. As a result, each hatchery has its own strain of these breeds. You can get different results from the same breed from different hatcheries. Since suitability to use as a meat bird isn't part of that criteria for the vast majority (if any) you can really get some varying results. They did sort of mention this in the study. They mention some of the other variables too. I think they did have a good understanding of the limitations of this study.

They mention you will get different results than they did. You can use their results to choose which breeds you want to start with, but I think a real value is more in helping you decide what to look at when deciding which of these is of value to you if you decide to run your own comparisons with the birds form your source.