I am with Wax on this one... the weight you shoot for is pretty much based on how they are going to be used when doing it for family purposes. If I was looking to sell them as whole birds then I would go for the 4 or 5 lb dressed out range, so they look and feel nice and substantial when packaged. So that would probably need to be in the 7 to 8 lb live range?
For holiday or family get together roasters then holding them till they dress out in the 8-10 lb range works. If you are doing cut up birds for general cooking and stir fry and such then dressing out in the 3 or 4 lb range is good and that meat will be the most tender also.
For culling extra roos rather than raising meaties... there is no good way to aim for a certain weight really, their ideal butcher time would be based on the breed of bird. Some mature quicker than others. So base butcher time on a couple of things. If you know they are extra, and only going to the pot, then watch their growth rate, when it suddenly or noticeably slows (many breeds between 14 and 20 wks) then you can figure to butcher soon after. They may put on some more weight, but their feed to growth ratio will change and every extra ounce is at the expense of a lot more feed.
If you are going for soup birds or stock pot birds then you can let them go longer because the meat will flavor more as they get older. But it is also a bit tougher so once again, you are back to basing the butcher time on the cooking plans for the bird.
The other thing to base butchering time on with the non meaties is simply personality or breeding purposes. Let the roo live and range until you decide if he has the right personality for the flock or the freezer and go from there. Some also cull based on physical traits needed for breeding, if they don't measure up for breeding stock then they are culled and you have to just cook it based on what age it is when the decision is made.
About the only way to get many breeds to a really large size and still be an easy meal to cook would be to have the males caponized when younger. It allows them to put on a lot more weight and really mature bone wise without the hormones toughening the meat. They also tend to be less active so their is less muscle causing stringy meat.
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