Farming and Homesteading Heritage Poultry

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I kinda think the age restriction is a bit silly, but it is what it is. If you think about it, the Delaware was known for 12 weeks to market weight. That was it's job before the chicken of tomorrow stuff played out and a big reason it was so popular.

At least at 16 weeks the meat is still pretty tender. Proper cooking techniques certainly help after that point.

I do wonder if anyone with The Livestock Conservancy is from a rural area, and if they know much about that time period to the present day. It does seem a lot of their information is akin to fairy tales. In the rural area where I am from, the younger birds were preferred, and the older birds were soup, if used at all. Sometimes they weren't worth the trouble, and that is coming from people who let nothing go to waste. It just seems like some suburban yuppie fascination. I would be horrible at marketing, because I am too honest.
 
I had a spreadsheet of chicken weights from before WW1 up to 1950. I can't find it now, but iirc the "Rubber Chicken" became a thing because it looked like a carcass from back in the day. New hamps, Delawares improved over the rubber chicken. The winning white rocks in the Chicken of Tomorrow contest in 1948 weighed in around 3lb I believe.

A lot of the good genetics were probably lost after that point. Cobb Vantess might still have some of their lines going, I'm not too sure. Sure would be neat if they did. New Hampshires were all but gone as far as I know.

As far as advancing productive qualities, that's been done on the commercial end of things. Would it be cool to have a 4-5lb NH carcass in 10 weeks? It sure would. Maybe one day i'll try for it. Things are working well for us for now
 
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I had a spreadsheet of chicken weights from before WW1 up to 1950. I can't find it now, but iirc the "Rubber Chicken" became a thing because it looked like a carcass from back in the day. New hamps, Delawares improved over the rubber chicken. The winning white rocks in the Chicken of Tomorrow contest in 1948 weighed in around 3lb I believe.

A lot of the good genetics were probably lost after that point. Cobb Vantess might still have some of their lines going, I'm not too sure. Sure would be neat if they did. New Hampshires were all but gone as far as I know.

As far as advancing productive qualities, that's been done on the commercial end of things. Would it be cool to have a 4lb NH carcass in 10 weeks? It sure would. Maybe one day i'll try for it. Things are working well for us for now

If you go back to WWI, the age to reach a certain age would be more variable than it would around 1950. Husbandry changed significantly, and people learned a lot. The weight by itself does not say much, but age and feed conversion are important also.

I am told there are still meat type New Hampshires around. I know I saw them in the mid 1990s, and they made the APA New Hampshires look scrawny. People long ago had New Hampshires that dressed 4 lbs. At less than 10 weeks, so that would still be catching up to what someone did decades ago.

If breeding to the standard was breeding for production, advancing productive qualities would have been seen in the APA birds, not the commercial birds which use different criteria. That has been my point. Breeding to the standard has seen a decline in productive qualities.
 
I've not seen any data of a 4lb dressed New Hamp at 10 weeks or less. That kinda bird would be awesome to see. From my reading a 4lb carcass at 12 weeks in 1950 was rare as 3-3.5lb was the norm. Maybe I just haven't found the proper literature yet. After the mid 50's it's pretty much the commercial cross broiler data I find.

The Chicken of Tomorrow contest was the best that we could do at the time from my understanding. Maybe there were folks that were growing bigger birds faster, but I just wouldn't know. Growing up we had leghorns and hatchery mixed birds from time to time. Some feral Banties lived in the fence row by the pond. Nobody had "meat" chickens other than broilers or turkey's for me to have any real world experience with back then. Nobody raised layers for meat, they just ate the old layers or used them for coyote bait.

So I would enjoy doing some new reading on poultry from back in the day if you care to point me to some. I do enjoy the history end of it. Hamburgs go way back, Dorkings in Roman wagon trains, and the blip on the history radar, Chicken of Tomorrow. That's how and why I chose the New hamps. They sounded great as a utility breed.
 
I've not seen any data of a 4lb dressed New Hamp at 10 weeks or less. That kinda bird would be awesome to see. From my reading a 4lb carcass at 12 weeks in 1950 was rare as 3-3.5lb was the norm. Maybe I just haven't found the proper literature yet. After the mid 50's it's pretty much the commercial cross broiler data I find.

The Chicken of Tomorrow contest was the best that we could do at the time from my understanding. Maybe there were folks that were growing bigger birds faster, but I just wouldn't know. Growing up we had leghorns and hatchery mixed birds from time to time. Some feral Banties lived in the fence row by the pond. Nobody had "meat" chickens other than broilers or turkey's for me to have any real world experience with back then. Nobody raised layers for meat, they just ate the old layers or used them for coyote bait.

So I would enjoy doing some new reading on poultry from back in the day if you care to point me to some. I do enjoy the history end of it. Hamburgs go way back, Dorkings in Roman wagon trains, and the blip on the history radar, Chicken of Tomorrow. That's how and why I chose the New hamps. They sounded great as a utility breed.

There were some broilers that were not crosses after 1950. My grandfather grew up the son of sharecroppers, then grew as the poultry industry grew on Northeast Georgia.

New Hampshires were a good utility breed, but the current birds are not what they once were, and not in a good way. But, people market them like nothing ever changed. What are you wanting to read about? Like I mentioned earlier, I would read some of the modern stuff to see how things really work, then go back and see how we got here. I have material from the late 1800s to present. As far as meat birds, I would read articles by Dunnington and Siegel on White Plymouth Rocks from the 1960s to 1980s. I lucked out and got a booklet by Williams and Jull on selecting meat birds from 1943. Those would kind of fill in the gap between APA and what we see today.
 
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As far as the booklet by Williams and Jull, I am not sure it is easy to find. I happened to see it on ebay, and snatched it up. I had never heard anyone mention it before I saw it. It is from the time just prior to the Chicken of Tomorrow contest.
 
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Seems to me that if the population of the "homestead" is two middle aged folks, who have no interest in selling eggs or chickens, medium size bantams would be ideal.

You have a point Ken, but bantams are not a typical breed for the homestead flock and, I have little experience with bantam eggs, but I know if it were just me and my wife, we could not depend on our bantams to provide eggs for even our consumption. Maybe if they weren't fond of eggs or didn't cook with eggs, a couple could manage a homestead with a pair of bantams.
Seems most individuals don’t consider bantams a viable option for eggs or meat and categorize them for exhibition quality only.
My New Hampshire Bantam will not produce amount of meat or number of eggs as large fowl that’s true.
In today’s specialized world there’s the meat strains that grow extremely fast to butcher weight but are very poor layers.
At the opposite end you have egg laying that lay 300 or more eggs annually but are very poor for meat.
The true dual purpose strains are a separate nich market that takes some research to find.
Getting back to my bantams they are not a true dual purpose strain because they lay produce meat and do well at shows.
Will they compete against meat strains or egg laying strains no they won’t.
They aren’t your backyard banty that was not sorted for production but lawn ornaments.
So you use two or three eggs for recipes and eat them like quail or squab.
It’s a matter of mind set about how they fit in your operation.
I adjusted my attitude on their usefulness and breed them to the SOP’s front section which addresses productivity.
Everyone just has to decide what fits in their operation.
I can’t imagine with feed the price it is trying to compete with the price of eggs or meat in grocery stores.
One must have a niche market.
 

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