Black Copper Marans for meat?

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gvntofly05

gvntofly05

Songster
10 Years
Sep 21, 2009
805
8
131
IN
Probably by fall or next spring I am going to have only a large flock of Black Copper Marans. Since they have become my project breed I will be hatching a lot and culling heavily! Has or does anyone on here eat their extra BCM roos and hens? If so how are they for meat compared to some of the big dual purpose breeds like BA's, Del's and Fav's?
 
I've never heard of or tried, but I am about to come later this year. I'd expect them to actually be good meat though, as they (males) have enormous chests and a very good carriage.
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Quote:
That's what I'm thinking! I've read that the hens are 6.5-7 lbs. If that's the case then they should dress to a decent weight like any other dual purpose.
 
We have culled a few of our standard cuckoo marans, and were very pleased, even with them being older hens.
Better then any of the other layers we have tasted.
 
Sorry to pull up an old thread, but I'm guessing people will search for this at some point.

We just butchered an extra BCM rooster from one of our hatches. He was 16 weeks old and dressed out at almost 4 lbs! (Around 3.85-3.9 lbs.) We butchered some Orpington boys at that age and they were only 3 lbs each. While the BCM was a little short on breast meat, he had an abundance of dark meat on the leg end. We were very pleased and are guessing they make really good meat birds if allowed to grow a few more weeks.
 
We eat our Marans rooster culls. They are decent sized and good tasting. They are usually around 6 mos old when we cull them so I can give them time to develop and see if they are something I would want to use as breeding stock or not. I think they are good dual purpose birds.
 
We just processed 18 of our Black Copper Marans at roughly 18 weeks. Average dressed weight was 4.25 lbs (though we did keep the 5 larger ones which will skew the numbers). Breasts were smaller, though quite long and likely would have filled out with time. Legs were very dark and quite large. Bones were much larger than I was expecting. There were large amounts of fat as well, a couple long threads of bright yellow, and much in the meat and skin. The taste wasn't anything amazing, and the legs were very tough. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve toughness? Should I have butchered them earlier?
 

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