Which meat bird - no crow?

[Heffalump]

Apologies, I know similar questions to this have been asked many times before.

I initially wanted to avoid cornish X as I want a dual purpose bird that will lay plenty of eggs and go broody. I wanted to use the cockerels for meat and keep the hens for eggs. It just feels more self sustaining to me. But now that I'm looking into all the different heritage breeds I'm realising I might have to prioritise their cull date due to crowing.

We have neighbours close enough to us that they could potentially complain if we have a dozen cockerels welcoming the dawn. I don't want to cause issues or be forced to cull early.

So are there any heritage breeds or cornish X alternatives that will reach their table weight before crowing?

 

[Heffalump]

Thank you both.

 

[Acre4Me]

Dorkings are known for both laying, broodiness, and meat carcass. One of the oldest breeds, and of European origin, so I would imagine they are easy enough to find where you are. They have distinctly short legs. They tend to have more dark meat than other birds. I’ve raised and butchered some, and they were tasty. Search my name during Dec 2020 (or only search my name in meat bird forum) -I wrote a detailed post about butchering BJG and Dorking side by side, with pics.

 

[Molpet]

Could get color broilers hens. They will get to size before they get tough. But they don't breed true, will have different sizes.
https://www.freedomrangerhatchery.com/product-category/day-old-chicks/broilers/

 

[Heffalump]

OHHH whoops, sorry probably should have checked that first

My fault, I should have mentioned!

 

[Heffalump]

Thank you.

Sorry if my posts were a little confusing. We already have a 3 roosters (buff orp, swedish flower and a tiny little sablepoot) and that noise level is tolerated okay by the neighbours. But I was thinking a dozen or more roos crowing would be something else. So my plan was to keep a couple of roos back from cull to breed on the next generation and hopefully that way I wouldn't have to continue to buy eggs.

I am going to look into the ranger equivalents in the UK a previous poster linked. But they are in England so I would need them shipped over. I'm hoping they'll agree to post me some matching eggs.

 

[Heffalump]

Should just add, ideally we want a large carcass. We have a big family so would like each bird to carry a food amount of meat.

 

[ShrekDawg]

There are actually breeds that are in between the processing times of the Cornish X and the heritage breeds. I believe they usually take about 12-14 weeks so somewhat longer than the CX but not quite as long as heritage breeds.

Although they may still potentially crow at that age and not sure about the girls but should be better than CX at least.

You could also look at some of the breeds that grow fairly fast. Like my Delaware I had was HUGE and grew really fast and she was a girl so boys would likely be bigger. New Hampshire Reds are supposed to grow quite big and fast too. I know my RIR did so I’m sure a NHR would too. My Orpington did too although lots of feathers lol but if you butcher them around maybe 4 months? 16 ish weeks? They should be pretty big!

But you could still have crowing which I understand you’re trying to avoid but they don’t have to be butchered super late or anything. Also it does depend cause I had some crowing and even successfully breeding by 4 months while others didn’t crow till like 6-8 months.

Here’s some of the alternate breeds though.

https://www.freedomrangerhatchery.com/product-category/day-old-chicks/broilers/

https://www.myerspoultry.com/product-category-meat-birds

 

[ShrekDawg]

Whoops, I guess it’s more like 9 weeks now, even better! Hahah they must have been improving them cause I swore it used to be more but yeah.

 

[Heffalump]

I am UK based so I don't have the same selection of hatchery options.