Is there a difference?

[Vdurangogirl]

I'm not quite ready for chicken's just yet but I'm hoping to learn as much as I can for when that time comes. Is there a difference between meat chicken's and laying chicken's? How old should a chicken be before it is ready to harvest? I've been told that after a certain age a chicken would be too tough for eating. It sounds silly to me but I'm new to this. Thank you in advance for any help

 

[MysteryChicken]

I'm not quite ready for chicken's just yet but I'm hoping to learn as much as I can for when that time comes. Is there a difference between meat chicken's and laying chicken's? How old should a chicken be before it is ready to harvest? I've been told that after a certain age a chicken would be too tough for eating. It sounds silly to me but I'm new to this. Thank you in advance for any help

There's Cornish Cross, which are meat chickens, they grow big, & fat within 6-7 weeks, & ready to butcher. With this high rate of growth comes health problems, & potential death.

There's Ranger Broilers, a slower growing Cornish Cross with less health problems, & are actually able to free range. They'd be ready to butcher between 9 - 11 weeks.

Duel Purpose(Both Meat, & Eggs). These can be either you want, some breeds are better for their meat then others, so choosing wisely is considered. I typically butcher these at 4-6 months, depends on how much they've filled out.

Egg Layers, are more for strictly egg Production. Most of which are layer hybrids, & live a shorter life due their every day laying. They're susceptible to various reproductive disorders, & either die from them, or end up being put down.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Hatchery stock of dual purpose birds are not bred to standard, they are bred for egg laying. Any research of meat traits of these birds will be incorrect if purchasing from a hatchery. Standard bred birds are the only way to go if one wants a good carcass. But all chicken can be butchered. Leghorn was a staple for its egg laying and culled for food on many farms.

 

[Molpet]

Age can determine cooking methods.
I start harvesting heritage around 16 wks. I usually roast, older fowls I pressure cook.

 

[NatJ]

I'm not quite ready for chicken's just yet but I'm hoping to learn as much as I can for when that time comes. Is there a difference between meat chicken's and laying chicken's? How old should a chicken be before it is ready to harvest? I've been told that after a certain age a chicken would be too tough for eating. It sounds silly to me but I'm new to this. Thank you in advance for any help

You can eat a chicken at any age. They are more tough as they get older, but they are never too tough to grind for sausage. I've never actually done that, but I have done long simmering for soup, followed by chopping the meat into small pieces.

After you kill the chicken and butcher it out, it will go into rigor mortis (the body gets stiff.) It will be more tough if you cook & eat it then, and less tough if you cook it before that, or if you keep it in the refrigerator until the rigor (stiffness) goes away again. That can take a few days-- just try wiggling the joints and see when they move easily again.

The "best" meat chickens are the ones that quickly grow to a large size. That lets you have more meat when they are still young enough to be very tender. "Cornish Game Hens" in the store are chickens too, just butchered at a smaller size/younger age.

The "best" laying hens are the ones that lay large numbers of eggs and have small skinny bodies (so they eat less food.) If you butcher them, you do not get much meat per hen, but what you do get is just as edible as the meat from a larger chicken.

But any adult hen will lay eggs if she is reasonably healthy, and any chicken can be eaten. We are used to thinking of meat chickens as being a certain size, but some people eat much smaller birds (examples: pigeons and quail.) Butchering chickens at those sizes is fine too.

When I was growing up, my mom like the White Rock breed of chicken. We kept a flock of hens to lay eggs, plus a rooster. Each spring we would hatch some eggs in an incubator. As those chicks grew, we butchered most of the males about 8 weeks old. They were physically smaller than grocery-store chickens, but they tasted fine, and they were tender enough to cook on the grill. If there were extra females, or females with any kind of problem, we butchered & ate them too. After we raised a new generation of pullets & a cockerel, we ate the old hens and the old rooster too (chicken soup or chicken & dumplings.)

We didn't always do it exactly the same way: sometimes we kept the old hens & rooster for another year and skipped raising chicks one year. Other times we wanted more meat, so we raised more batches of chicks in a year, and butchered both males and females in those extra batches. Or we might buy some chicks of a different breed, either to raise for meat or to have some different color hens in the laying flock.

But the basic pattern was that we ate any chicken that we didn't want to continue keeping as a layer or a breeding rooster, we adjusted cooking methods to work with the chickens we had, and if that didn't make enough chicken meat we raised some specifically for the purpose (sometimes Cornish Cross meat chicks, the ones that grow fastest, because they really are the best if you want lots of meat fast.)

 

[Ridgerunner]

Is there a difference between meat chicken's and laying chicken's?

Some chickens are bred to efficiently convert food into eggs, usually a lot of fairly large eggs. Some chickens are bred to efficiently convert food into meat. Some are considered Dual Purpose. These are not nearly as efficient as pure egg or pure meat chickens but are reasonable at both. Some chickens are more decorative than anything else.

Chickens that specialize in egg laying typically have smaller bodies so they can use what they eat to create eggs instead of having to maintain a large body. You can eat them but they are not going to give you much meat. Chickens raised for meat will lay eggs but they typically lay a lot fewer than the egg laying breeds.

How old should a chicken be before it is ready to harvest?

This is discussed above by others. It can vary by breeds and by your goals.

I've been told that after a certain age a chicken would be too tough for eating. It sounds silly to me but I'm new to this.

Any chicken of any age can be eaten if you know how to cook it. The older they get the tougher they can be but there are methods to manage this. If you don't know what you are doing they can be tough. If you do know what you are doing you can turn a several years old rooster into a gourmet meal.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Nobody has yet pointed out that laying hens are typically good at laying eggs for at least two years, and reasonably good for another year, though production does drop off. After three years, they still make reasonably good stewing chickens. Beyond that, I use them for making broth and give the meat to the dogs, as it tends to be stringy and a bit tough IMO although not totally inedible if you cut it small, like what you would find in a can of commercial soup.

 

[K0k0shka]

Lots of good information has already been given. One thing that I didn't see mentioned is the proportions of the different types of meat, in the meat vs. non-meat chickens. That may not matter to you, but it matters enough to me that it can be a deal-breaker. "Meat chickens" like Cornish cross, were bred to not just add a lot of meat quickly, but to specifically add a lot of white meat - in the breast. Their breasts are so absurdly large, that the chickens tip forward and find it hard to walk! If you like white meat, that's good news for you. But I hate white meat, so for that reason alone I would not raise Cornish cross (I have many reasons not to like them, actually, but the breast issue is at the top). So I prefer meatier dual purpose birds, because they fill out more uniformly, without putting so much on the breast.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Lots of good information has already been given. One thing that I didn't see mentioned is the proportions of the different types of meat, in the meat vs. non-meat chickens. That may not matter to you, but it matters enough to me that it can be a deal-breaker. "Meat chickens" like Cornish cross, were bred to not just add a lot of meat quickly, but to specifically add a lot of white meat - in the breast. Their breasts are so absurdly large, that the chickens tip forward and find it hard to walk! If you like white meat, that's good news for you. But I hate white meat, so for that reason alone I would not raise Cornish cross (I have many reasons not to like them, actually, but the breast issue is at the top). So I prefer meatier dual purpose birds, because they fill out more uniformly, without putting so much on the breast.

Normally I would agree with you on the subject of white meat ... but the white meat on this bird I baked yesterday was tender, moist and delicious. I was happily surprised.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I was going to comment, but the above well covers the broad summary of the subject. Nothing I would disagree with above.