Breeding your own meats

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Beer can said:
Sorry too slow, already had them Lol!
I'm going to do the same as I did last summer for a bunch of heritage roos. They averaged between 4 and 5 pounds dressed. At between 12 and 16 weeks, I don't remember and I won't blow smoke. I would have let them go longer, but I didn't like what they were doing to my pullets.
For one I am fortunate that I work at a dairy plant and have access to a lot of free cottage cheese, my biggest saver. I also fed them all the fish my kids could catch, they love fishing. It was mostly pan fish, blue gills, ground them up with a old hand grinder, heads and everything. I Also planned on free ranging as much as possible. But right now with super cold weather I'm finding my egg layers are eating less now that they are not running around. The one new thing I am going to try is making fodder for them, with any grains I can find cheap. TSC has wheat seed for deer food plots at a reasonable price, and whole corn is cheap, add some bird feesder BOSS and I plan on growing some greens such as spinach, swiss chard and kale to feed them. I also have a pond full of duckweed that is supposed to be super high in protein. With the free CCheese plus everything else I think I can afford to raise some meat birds.
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You are really resourceful....What a pleasure to hear from someone who has done many of the same things I have cooked up over the years....Keep it up!
 
I just took out a package of chicken necks out of the freezer and it had a date on it! Those roos were 16weeks old. Lightest was the polish 3lbs dressed largest was RIReds at 4lbs and a bunch in between. Now I'm off to make some chicken neck eggdrop soup.
 
Sorry I have been absent for 9 months on this one. I decided to get some cornish x and Freedom Rangers this year, all cornish x have been butchered but the freedom rangers are about 8 weeks and should be ready by mid to late Oct. I'm thinking I will keep a few of the pullets and possibly a cockerel and see how well they lay, I don't know if they'll breed true but they seem to be exactly what I was looking for as far as grow-out time. The cockerels are all large bodied, pullets are large bodied as well, but not like the cornish x are, they are still able to free range without an issue at all, actually they like to range better than my heritage breed wyandottes. I already butcher cockerels as they reach a decent weight but this breed is really slow growing. I had a few speckled sussex earlier this spring and they seemed to be a pretty dense bird, good weight for their bodies.

Here they are in front of their tractor.


 

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