Delaware Meat Bird Attempt

[Bookworm007]

Alright I did a weigh in but first let me fix an error, I said earlier that the 10 cockerels were from McMurray but they are not. There were ordered from Meyers, I got my hatcheries confused. Now onto the numbers, all of the chicks are doing great! Deer Run chicks are a bit more feathered and have some of the black patterning coming in, but both groups are very healthy.

Average Weight of Meyer Cockerels: .26 lbs

Average Weight of Deer Run Chicks: .28 lbs

These are the weights at 2 weeks with the Meyer chicks still on Purina Meat Bird and the Deer Run chicks on Chick Starter. The Meyer chicks were much more consistent on weight but I believe this is due to them being a pure cockerel order vs the straight run of Deer Run chicks.

 

[davidmpenning]

@Bookworm007
How are they doing? Any new weights since the 2 week mark?

 

[Molpet]

 

[Rockyaspen]

Not much to add other than it’s my first attempt at meat birds and i too went with delawares from deer run! Mine hatched 5/30 and I’m planning to process 9/16, so they will be just at 14 weeks.

 

[kimwg]

Thanks for sharing about your experiences so far -- I will be following your updates with interest! We do american bresse right now but something that grows out a couple weeks faster without being a frankenchicken would be great!

 

[Bookworm007]

Sorry for the slow update guys, we actually did the butcher about a month ago when the chickens were 14 weeks and they all were on average the same weight. Our largest example was from the meyer hatchery on meat bird feed with a bled weight of 5.12 lbs. All the roosters averaged between 4 to 5 lbs when bled but not gutted or plucked. I will be doing another Delaware hatch in the spring with a larger sample size and will try to get some better data. One thing I did find interesting was our friends brought done Bresse roosters to butcher which were the same age but with the same carcass weight the Bresse had more breast meat. I will definitely be choosing which genetics to keep to try and bring up the size of the breast meat at 14 weeks for my birds.

Overall I was very happy with the first attempt. We definitely have some work to do on genetics but they better so much easier to raise than Cornish and had way better temperament than some other broiler breeds I have tried.