There is a lot of good information in that post but the OP (Original Poster) specifically said:
I have seen that the Cornish hybrids seem to be the best if I'm going to be ordering them each time I want meat. What birds do you suggest if I want to breed them and use them for meat, so that my flock is self-sufficient.
Crombienator recognizes that the hybrid meat birds are the most cost efficient, you won’t get a lot of argument from me on that, but want to hatch their own. I’ll try to address that question specifically.
Self-sufficient can mean different things to different people. I think here you mean that you want to hatch your own chicks. Chicks are a cost but a really big part of the cost is feed. Housing and brooding costs enter into that too but once you get your set-up those costs drop for the second batch. For me, self-sufficient is largely about feeding them. If you buy all or most of what they are going to eat you are not going to be very self-sufficient unless you are talking commercial methods and quantities where you sell enough eggs or meat to cover costs. If yours forage for a lot of their feed or you grow your own, feed costs become less important. I don’t think that’s what we are talking about here.
There are several threads in this section where people talk about what breeds to get for dual purpose meat birds. EggheadJr has a good one but there are many others. You will get different opinions. In my opinion, breed is not as important as strain. People like to think that every bird of a breed is identical worldwide. They are not. If someone breeds a flock of Delaware for meat purposes and ignores egg laying, you will eventually get a pretty good meat flock but they won’t lay great. If someone breeds Delaware for egg production and ignores the meat properties, you get good egg layers that are not that great for meat. There are general breed tendencies, true Cornish not the Cornish Cross hybrids, should have more breast meat than about any other breed. If white meat is what you want, it’s good to have Cornish in the mix.
A problem is that different hatcheries have different people selecting which birds get to breed. They use different criteria when selecting breeders. In general you are not going to get a good meat bird from a hatchery, but hatchery stock is what my flock is based on. In general I eat the ones I don’t want to eat and breed the ones that I do want to eat. Over time I get a flock that better suits my purposes. If you can start off with stock that suits your purposes you are much better off, but it’s hard finding that plus the chicks or hatching eggs are usually not cheap.
Part of it is your expectations too. Many people are looking at getting the biggest bird they possibly can. I like a bigger bird, I’m trying to breed for that, but half the chicks I hatch are female. Half the chickens I eat are female. There are only two of us so we get enough meat from the smaller females. Some people sell any females they hatch they don’t need to keep to replace layers and only eat the males. My goal is not to get the absolute largest cockerel I can, I want my smallest cockerel to be a decent size. We all do these things differently.
One big difference in the hybrid Cornish Cross and a dual purpose chicken for meat is butcher age. The hybrids are butchered at a very young age so they are very tender. You can cook them any way you wish, including frying or grilling. The dual purpose birds put on meat a whole lot slower so they are butchered at an older age. If you butcher them at an age young enough to fry or grill, there won’t be a lot of meat there. If you wait to let them gain more weight you need to change your cooking methods to something slower and with more moisture. Again, we are all different. Some people are find with frying a 14 week old chicken, others will find those too tough, especially if they are used to the chicken you buy at the store.
I love my broody hens. They do all the work of hatching and raising the chicks while I just reap the benefits. But even with a small flock where a lot of the hens go broody every year, I can’t raise enough chicks for my meat purposes relying only on broody hens. And they don’t go broody when you want them to. I have to use an incubator. If I doubled or more likely tripled the size of my flock I might get enough broody hens to raise enough, but feed costs and facility sizes go way up. With an incubator you control when you hatch and pretty much how many you hatch. A lot of dual purpose breeds don’t go broody very often to start with. I try to breed broodiness into my flock and most do go broody, but when I started with hatchery birds, some breeds known to go broody a lot, I got very few broody hens. I think you should count on an incubator.
There is another issue. How much freezer space do you have? Some people pressure can chicken to preserve it instead of freezing it, but chicken can take up a lot of space in the freezer. This time of year freezer space is pretty precious for me with all the stuff from the garden. With the hybrid broilers you pretty much need to process them when they are a certain age or they get medical problems. With dual purpose chickens you can wait on butchering them but if you are buying their feed the costs per pound of meat can go way up. If they are mostly foraging for their feed it’s not as bad.
I know this is a very long post but I consider this a fairly complicated topic. That’s mainly because you have so many different options, so many different ways to go. You probably should spend some time reading different threads in this section to see people’s thoughts on the topic. We all have so many different goals related to this and we all do it so differently that there is no one way to go. You’ll have to pick a direction and just jump in.
Good luck!
I have seen that the Cornish hybrids seem to be the best if I'm going to be ordering them each time I want meat. What birds do you suggest if I want to breed them and use them for meat, so that my flock is self-sufficient.
Crombienator recognizes that the hybrid meat birds are the most cost efficient, you won’t get a lot of argument from me on that, but want to hatch their own. I’ll try to address that question specifically.
Self-sufficient can mean different things to different people. I think here you mean that you want to hatch your own chicks. Chicks are a cost but a really big part of the cost is feed. Housing and brooding costs enter into that too but once you get your set-up those costs drop for the second batch. For me, self-sufficient is largely about feeding them. If you buy all or most of what they are going to eat you are not going to be very self-sufficient unless you are talking commercial methods and quantities where you sell enough eggs or meat to cover costs. If yours forage for a lot of their feed or you grow your own, feed costs become less important. I don’t think that’s what we are talking about here.
There are several threads in this section where people talk about what breeds to get for dual purpose meat birds. EggheadJr has a good one but there are many others. You will get different opinions. In my opinion, breed is not as important as strain. People like to think that every bird of a breed is identical worldwide. They are not. If someone breeds a flock of Delaware for meat purposes and ignores egg laying, you will eventually get a pretty good meat flock but they won’t lay great. If someone breeds Delaware for egg production and ignores the meat properties, you get good egg layers that are not that great for meat. There are general breed tendencies, true Cornish not the Cornish Cross hybrids, should have more breast meat than about any other breed. If white meat is what you want, it’s good to have Cornish in the mix.
A problem is that different hatcheries have different people selecting which birds get to breed. They use different criteria when selecting breeders. In general you are not going to get a good meat bird from a hatchery, but hatchery stock is what my flock is based on. In general I eat the ones I don’t want to eat and breed the ones that I do want to eat. Over time I get a flock that better suits my purposes. If you can start off with stock that suits your purposes you are much better off, but it’s hard finding that plus the chicks or hatching eggs are usually not cheap.
Part of it is your expectations too. Many people are looking at getting the biggest bird they possibly can. I like a bigger bird, I’m trying to breed for that, but half the chicks I hatch are female. Half the chickens I eat are female. There are only two of us so we get enough meat from the smaller females. Some people sell any females they hatch they don’t need to keep to replace layers and only eat the males. My goal is not to get the absolute largest cockerel I can, I want my smallest cockerel to be a decent size. We all do these things differently.
One big difference in the hybrid Cornish Cross and a dual purpose chicken for meat is butcher age. The hybrids are butchered at a very young age so they are very tender. You can cook them any way you wish, including frying or grilling. The dual purpose birds put on meat a whole lot slower so they are butchered at an older age. If you butcher them at an age young enough to fry or grill, there won’t be a lot of meat there. If you wait to let them gain more weight you need to change your cooking methods to something slower and with more moisture. Again, we are all different. Some people are find with frying a 14 week old chicken, others will find those too tough, especially if they are used to the chicken you buy at the store.
I love my broody hens. They do all the work of hatching and raising the chicks while I just reap the benefits. But even with a small flock where a lot of the hens go broody every year, I can’t raise enough chicks for my meat purposes relying only on broody hens. And they don’t go broody when you want them to. I have to use an incubator. If I doubled or more likely tripled the size of my flock I might get enough broody hens to raise enough, but feed costs and facility sizes go way up. With an incubator you control when you hatch and pretty much how many you hatch. A lot of dual purpose breeds don’t go broody very often to start with. I try to breed broodiness into my flock and most do go broody, but when I started with hatchery birds, some breeds known to go broody a lot, I got very few broody hens. I think you should count on an incubator.
There is another issue. How much freezer space do you have? Some people pressure can chicken to preserve it instead of freezing it, but chicken can take up a lot of space in the freezer. This time of year freezer space is pretty precious for me with all the stuff from the garden. With the hybrid broilers you pretty much need to process them when they are a certain age or they get medical problems. With dual purpose chickens you can wait on butchering them but if you are buying their feed the costs per pound of meat can go way up. If they are mostly foraging for their feed it’s not as bad.
I know this is a very long post but I consider this a fairly complicated topic. That’s mainly because you have so many different options, so many different ways to go. You probably should spend some time reading different threads in this section to see people’s thoughts on the topic. We all have so many different goals related to this and we all do it so differently that there is no one way to go. You’ll have to pick a direction and just jump in.
Good luck!
