Best way to have plenty of chickens in the freezer and in the backyard????

Deleware were sports from broiler crossed of New Hampshire and Barred Rocks. White feathered birds preferred for broiler industry due to cleaner carcass so these sports were saved and bred to standard, later were crossed back to New Hampshire for broiler market. Both New Hampshire and Plymouth were the Meat bird standard and were crossed for the effect of hybrid vigor and faster growth.

With a mixed backyard flock you'd be selecting for both length and width of bird. Length lends to better egg laying potential and width for meat potential. Both the New Hampshire and Plymouth Rocks are long and broad, heritage stock is. Birds that are lanky you'd not use to breed forward and any birds that laid poorly when mature you'd not breed forward either. Over generations of strict selection for breeders you'll end up with a good backyard dual purpose bird even from your starting flock.

Basically, if you hatch enough from your Deleware over Barred Plymouth you'll find a few that grow faster and larger than the others- both sexes. Pick from the best of those few for breeders.

Ridgerunner said:

Things never work out exactly as you plan.

Click to expand...

Isn't that the truth!!!

Very comprehensive response btw.

Thank you all u have been every helpful

Very interesting thread!
I am currently raising some Mistral Gris meat birds - if you like a tasty bird with more dark meat, vigorous and able to free range, then perhaps you can consider them. They take 12- 14 weeks to raise and are nothing like the Cornish beasties.
I am also going to cross some with my Orpingtons and BCMs and see what develops. Both are big birds and will add some hybrid vigor I think.

Our chicken interest started from trying to feed 3 not-yet teen aged young men - so I understand your position.

Chicken math is complex. It's hard to know what will happen!

I currently have 20 hens, 1 rooster - all Black java's, a heritage breed. Have had since 2010 - still have those hens too. Slower growing (takes up to 26wks for a pullet to lay and nearly 30 before a cockerel is fully matured and sized). Good layer, all year round. Broody characteristic. Good 'dual purpose' breed.

From my flock of 20 hens, I get 8-12 eggs a day - year round. That's enough for our family and to 'sell' to four customers consistently. (Price is $3.50 a dozen eggs which pretty much covers feed for all).

The hens will be broody starting early May, with chicks hatching most of the spring/summer. So egg production dips while hens are on the nests. If only 1/2 of the flock successfully hatches out 4 chicks each - that's still 40 birds! Figure 50% are cockerals - that's 20 boys in Camp Frigidaire by late fall or at the latest late winter. (I typically cannot take their crowing after about 16-20wks....especially if there are a lot of them!).

Our family of 4 uses at least 2 birds a week to eat and/or share with others (I take a lot of food to folks in need through church - so a batch of soup is always at the ready in my freezer). So, if I wish to have our own meat on the table week-in and week-out, I add in a batch of Red Rangers from Welp hatchery starting in early May. That's 25 birds. We spend 5 nights to get them to Camp Frigidaire in mid September. However, we have a large upright dedicated freezer for meat. 25 carcasses, even split into pieces, takes up a LOT of space in a freezer! 2 shelves worth of chicken meat alone! So we manage to have chicken we raised on our table nearly year round. By May, I might not have any left, but I know we'll have some soon - so we switch and eat more beef on the grill instead, or fresh out of the garden come mid summer!

I hope this helps you understand some of what chicken math does. What I'll do this year if 50% of the chicks are girls, I do not know. I don't wish a flock larger than 20 hens - that's a lot of feed, a lot of litter to compost, a lot of compost to use around our acreage, and just a lot of details (waterers, broody hen spaces, various pens to keep chicks from trouble, etc.). Ask me come July!

Have you posted over on the Delaware breeding threads? I am just starting out, and am looking for genetic diversity later on, and am just testing the waters at this point.

I dunno, I just don't want to breed my gals with the male they were shipped with in case they are from the same clutch. I know, this is Kentucky...

Anyhow, best of luck to you.

Sidebar: The broilers that were shipped with my girls for added warmth are only slightly bigger than the Delawares at the end of three weeks. Two of the DE girls are a little slimmer, but the rest even have a comparable body profile at this point. Weight differences are negligible at the moment.

Why do you think the birds shipped with your chicks for warmth were broilers? Did you specifically order broilers yourself or are these “packing peanuts”, added by the hatchery for the warmth? Practically all the packing peanuts the hatchery adds are excess dual purpose males. It would be unusual for them to add broilers, though I guess anything is possible however unlikely it may be.

If they were truly broilers by three weeks there should be a huge difference in size. Sorry but not much difference in size at three weeks just doesn’t sound right.

I don’t know which hatchery you got your chicks from but with the number of hens and roosters they have in the breeding pen it is pretty unlikely that the male and females are that closely related. You’d probably be OK for a few generations breeding the chicks you have. Whether you use that male or get one from a different source, you still need to select the ones you breed carefully.

Every breed ever developed was developed by inbreeding. Every breed ever developed is maintained by some degree of inbreeding. Every grand champion show chicken at a major show was developed by inbreeding. There are techniques used to maintain a certain level of genetic diversity but even without using any of them, as long as you only use your best stock from breeding you should be OK for a few generations.

Good luck and welcome to the adventure.