Silkies for meat? Heritage crosses young or old?

[chanceosunshine]

Saturday is harvest day for our 50 Kosher Kings. I have a nasty Silky rooster that I'm thinking of culling too. I hear that Silkies are "delicacies".

I also have a slew of young male Silkies and a half dozen young backyard crossed, mostly heritage breeds, that I'm considering harvesting. When I say young, I means about 3 or 4 months old.

Has anyone tried Silky meat? Anyone do it regularly?

My guess is that harvesting them so young would be nearly pointless, right? When we have harvest older backyard crosses, they were still quite small after processing (4lbs ish), but WOW the flavor. So, is it better to give them a year to develop some flavors or is there a benefit (besides not feeding them for a year) to harvesting young birds?

 

[Debbie292d]

Saturday is harvest day for our 50 Kosher Kings. I have a nasty Silky rooster that I'm thinking of culling too. I hear that Silkies are "delicacies".

I also have a slew of young male Silkies and a half dozen young backyard crossed, mostly heritage breeds, that I'm considering harvesting. When I say young, I means about 3 or 4 months old.

Has anyone tried Silky meat? Anyone do it regularly?

My guess is that harvesting them so young would be nearly pointless, right? When we have harvest older backyard crosses, they were still quite small after processing (4lbs ish), but WOW the flavor. So, is it better to give them a year to develop some flavors or is there a benefit (besides not feeding them for a year) to harvesting young birds?

We raise silkies but never ate one. I know their meat is considered a delicacy in some Asian countries, and it's used in many recipes because of its black meat. The bones make great broth. We had some Asians out here to take a few roosters we had, and I asked if that was their demise. They said, "Yes, but don't knock it until you've tried it." I'll pass, but enjoy!

Silkies aren't full grown, size-wise, until about 5-6 months. They're already so small I'm assuming would only feed about 2-3 people, so going younger would be even worse. Those Asians that came here didn't seem to care and took the older ones.

 

[Molpet]

Usually the cooking method determines age of harvest.