I want to keep the sustainability of the flock so I have renewable scores of meat. Would the easiest way to do this to be keep mating same roo with hens and harvesting the chicks when the fatten up. This way there is no father daughter mom son and sister brother. I don't have the chickens or roo yet I want to get breeding part figured out 1st.
Hi - and welcome to BYC! If you are looking for meat, you want to make sure you have "meaty" birds and not thin birds like Leghorns. (Which lay eggs like crazy though.) Lots of people process their extra cockerels and keep the pullets for layers or to sell. All depends on what your goals are. I have a more decorative flock, but do process the extra boys - not enough to keep me in chicken though. Serious meat breeders often buy a bunch of cornish cross chicks and process a freezerful a couple months later. This thread may have ideas for you: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/845018/breeding-for-production-eggs-and-or-meat
Thanks I'll read that. What I want to do is keep us in meat. I want to start by getting hatchlings I guess 1 roo and 10 to 12 meat hens.i figured I would take what hatches and harvest and then mate the same roo and same hens,I thought this would be best way to avoid in breeding. I don't know if that's a good way too do. Now I'm not positive that 1 roo 12 hens will keep us in meat but that's okay for now. I want to get the breeding down then I can go from there. So is that a good easy way to do it. I don't want to have to keep getting birds from hatcheries. I have another question but I need to get this figured out first. If I can keep mating the original birds how many seasons can i do. I'm really confused.
You need to do a search for username Ridgerunner. He does what you're looking at, pretty much. He has great posts about how to manage a flock of birds that provide all your meat. There are also good posts in the Meat Bird section. You're going to have to determine how many birds you want per year. Your meat bird hens may not go broody, so you'll probably need an incubator. Even using broody hens is a spotty thing if you're depending on them to provide meat.
Basics are: Parent to offspring mating works out fine for 3, 4 or 5 generations....but you want to avoid sibling matings. New blood cockbird every 3, 4 or 5 years is a good idea.
You can probably find free cockerels pretty easily if you want to rotate them in for new blood, particularly from cities with restrictions regarding numbers or roosters.
