- Thread starter
- #211
KoopOnTruckin
Songster
Well, I'm officially starting on Generation 2 of my birds. I only kept 2 roosters, one DC and one WR. They are both beautiful, but there are not enough hens to keep them both happy. So they are sharing a bachelor pad, which leaves the hens and ducks in the big coop (the drake thinks he's the favorite of all the boys, which is not true). I would keep the DC roo out with the hens as well, but he is a bit aggressive at my wife and kid when I let them free range. I think he's going through his territorial phase - he knows I'm in charge, but I'm out there a lot more than my kid is, so he goes after my boy every time he turns his back to the roo. I've been tempted to "permanently separate" him, but then I remember the end goal. And also keeping the roos separate means I'll know my hens are only mating with the particular roo I want and when I choose, this is very important at this time until I figure out what is the best recipe for me.
For my first incubation, I've got 4 White Rock/Delaware eggs and 4 Dark Cornish/Delaware eggs. They are due to hatch in another week or so. I'm hoping for an awesome WR/Del hen out of it, but the rest will likely be food or for sale. The next batch will only be for WR/Dels, I want to add the 2 largest hens to my current flock, then the rest will all be for sale. Once that is done, I will likely part with the WR rooster and integrate my DC roo with the flock. At that point, he will be properly trained that people are always in charge.
The next few batches will be Dark Cornish over the biggest WR and Del hens. I'm likely only going to do 4 of each at a time again until I figure out which is the best-producing second breed. They will be just for meat, but if I find a roo that is huge compared to the others, i may keep him for a 4-breed cross, eventually.
I'm currently boiling up 3 of the last roosters. The Dark Cornish breast meat is huge, something I'd expect to pay $5/lb at a typical grocery store. The thighs and legs of all 3 varieties are very big. They were all 25 weeks old, so a bit tougher than I would want but still very flavorful, and the soup that they make is a neighborhood favorite. After seeing these birds at 25 weeks, I again have high hopes that the hybrids will get that big within 18-20 weeks. Maybe I'll get lucky.
I found that I got a bit frustrated a few times during that first batch... I mainly got frustrated at the size of the birds. So once I separated the smaller ones from the big ones and only kept track of those "keepers", I got more encouraged. There were just so many dinky-small ones, including one of the "dark cornish" hens that I got. (I put "DC" in quotes because I don't think that is what she is, at least not fully. Maybe a bantam. She's tiny, like a bit larger than a crow. But she's sweet, so I've kept her for now.) But take her and the other female out of the mix, and the DCs are a pretty solid specimen.
The next frustration came as they got to the 18-20 week timeframe. Even knowing that they wouldn't be huge, I'd hoped they would be. That hope was dashed, and I naively took that to mean something. It didn't. They did as well as I'd hoped originally when I started this project. All of the research that I had done was pretty accurate. And hey, it was hatchery stock, so not bad when you look at all of the variables. But then when they were big enough, the meat wasn't as tender as I'd hoped, so again I got frustrated. So I learned that, next time, the "eaters" will be in the mobile tractor only, able to be out in the fresh grass daily, but no room to run or flap their wings. I'm going to stick with the plan that I had originally. That should help with their tenderness, or that is what I've read and now tend to believe.
My final frustration was the amount of work that it took to pluck them. I tried making my own feather plucker, and that didn't work out as well as I'd hoped and I'm back to the drawing board on it. I've got some time to perfect it, but until then I've also realized that plucking by hand really isn't that much more work. I need to slow down and enjoy the process a bit more. They've earned that.
I once again have high hopes. As I smell that stock cooking on the stove, I'm reminded why I'm doing this, and that the next batch won't be limited to just soup.
For my first incubation, I've got 4 White Rock/Delaware eggs and 4 Dark Cornish/Delaware eggs. They are due to hatch in another week or so. I'm hoping for an awesome WR/Del hen out of it, but the rest will likely be food or for sale. The next batch will only be for WR/Dels, I want to add the 2 largest hens to my current flock, then the rest will all be for sale. Once that is done, I will likely part with the WR rooster and integrate my DC roo with the flock. At that point, he will be properly trained that people are always in charge.
The next few batches will be Dark Cornish over the biggest WR and Del hens. I'm likely only going to do 4 of each at a time again until I figure out which is the best-producing second breed. They will be just for meat, but if I find a roo that is huge compared to the others, i may keep him for a 4-breed cross, eventually.
I'm currently boiling up 3 of the last roosters. The Dark Cornish breast meat is huge, something I'd expect to pay $5/lb at a typical grocery store. The thighs and legs of all 3 varieties are very big. They were all 25 weeks old, so a bit tougher than I would want but still very flavorful, and the soup that they make is a neighborhood favorite. After seeing these birds at 25 weeks, I again have high hopes that the hybrids will get that big within 18-20 weeks. Maybe I'll get lucky.
I found that I got a bit frustrated a few times during that first batch... I mainly got frustrated at the size of the birds. So once I separated the smaller ones from the big ones and only kept track of those "keepers", I got more encouraged. There were just so many dinky-small ones, including one of the "dark cornish" hens that I got. (I put "DC" in quotes because I don't think that is what she is, at least not fully. Maybe a bantam. She's tiny, like a bit larger than a crow. But she's sweet, so I've kept her for now.) But take her and the other female out of the mix, and the DCs are a pretty solid specimen.
The next frustration came as they got to the 18-20 week timeframe. Even knowing that they wouldn't be huge, I'd hoped they would be. That hope was dashed, and I naively took that to mean something. It didn't. They did as well as I'd hoped originally when I started this project. All of the research that I had done was pretty accurate. And hey, it was hatchery stock, so not bad when you look at all of the variables. But then when they were big enough, the meat wasn't as tender as I'd hoped, so again I got frustrated. So I learned that, next time, the "eaters" will be in the mobile tractor only, able to be out in the fresh grass daily, but no room to run or flap their wings. I'm going to stick with the plan that I had originally. That should help with their tenderness, or that is what I've read and now tend to believe.
My final frustration was the amount of work that it took to pluck them. I tried making my own feather plucker, and that didn't work out as well as I'd hoped and I'm back to the drawing board on it. I've got some time to perfect it, but until then I've also realized that plucking by hand really isn't that much more work. I need to slow down and enjoy the process a bit more. They've earned that.
I once again have high hopes. As I smell that stock cooking on the stove, I'm reminded why I'm doing this, and that the next batch won't be limited to just soup.
