besides cornish x whats a good meatie

[stillstoked]

I raised the Cornish x's but whats a good meaty for taste?

 

[Chickenrandomness]

Wyandottes. when fully grown, they are nearly as porportionate as a cornish X at butchering age. brahmas are slow growing, but huge! and if you have a lot of time on your hands, Jersy Giants will grow out to be humongus at around 2 years old

 

[kstaven]

Ever consider pure blood cornish? They grow slower but produce a very good table bird.

Delawares where the meat bird before the cornish cross as where dorkings.

 

[Bossroo]

In todays' world... GOOD LUCK in finding one . Many of the meat birds of yesterday take too long and cost too much to raise. Kentucky Fried Colonel, as well as the other fine and family restaurants would be out of business in short order if they used the other breeds for their menus. Market demand + time to raise to reach slaughter weight ( 6-8 weeks vs. 18-24 weeks to 2 years) + production costs + processing costs + overhead of meal preperation = $$$$ profit / loss . The Corlonel has 11 secret herbs and spices, each chef has his own secret recipe. We use greatgrandma's. YUM !!!

 

[hoping4better]

Quote:
Yeah, but in yesteryear they were raising THEIR OWN food most often and they grew their own chicken feed (at least my wife's grandpa and great grandpa did) and they nearly exclusively free ranged. The chicken huts of today weren't even really considered back then. So, time wasn't that big of a deal. The chickens tasted better, were healthier, and given their methods (poor people raised em mostly) they were cheap to raise/feed!

 

[phasianidae]

Quality Wyandottes are excellent, they also seem to pass on the wonderful carcass shape very nicely to their F1 offspring. Provided the other component is a fairly heavy breed.

 

[Neil Grassbaugh]

Quote:
Yeah, but in yesteryear they were raising THEIR OWN food most often and they grew their own chicken feed (at least my wife's grandpa and great grandpa did) and they nearly exclusively free ranged. The chicken huts of today weren't even really considered back then. So, time wasn't that big of a deal. The chickens tasted better, were healthier, and given their methods (poor people raised em mostly) they were cheap to raise/feed!

hoping4better

There is an element of your nostalgia that is missing today. The chickens of yesterday - Rocks, Reds, Sussex, Cornish, etc. of the days you are longing for no longer exist. The meat and dual purpose breeds promoted by hatcheries today have been been selected for egglaying ability and little else. I think that maybe they are not even "selected" for that. It just happens that the leftover pullets from the hatching season are kept as breeders and those who lay the most dominate the gene pool. They hardly even look like the picture in the hatchery catalog (usually) and most of them would never reach the weight specified in The Standard or as advertised.

Then you have the exhibition chickens that are bred to look like the standard specifications and are often times much larger than The Standerd calls for. However, it takes them forever to get to the weight needed for exhibition (or table use) and many breeds are seriously poor layers.

 

[gjensen]

I have raised a few birds for the table other than Cornish X. Many breeds that have been mentioned here have potential. There are four things that need to be addressed if you are going to raise pure breeds for meat. First is breed type. There will be many opinions as far as breed of choice. Any that have a history of being used for the purpouse has potential. Second is strain. Not all strains within a breed are created equal. The third item is selection. Certain breeds have a particular amount of potential as does particular strains within that breed type. Selection for a good meat type in subsequent generations would be to maximise that potential. Lastly but maybe most importantly is management. A high protein game bird feed or broiler feed and artificially long days (16 hrs) makes a huge difference in the time it takes to reach a target weight.
There are other considerations when selected the bird type of choice. Some birds that have a slower maturation rate are eating less feed and may be better at digesting courser food items like various grasses etc. Ofcourse that is not always the case. I personally am a fan of New Hampshires, Delewares, Barred and White Plymouth Rocks. Wyandottes could fit in with how I am doing things. If I was in a different situation I might have chose to work with Dorkings, or maybe even some OEGs. It all depends on you. There is still alot of potential out there, and a need for people to work with different breeds and make them useful again. Now if cost is a primary consideration raise the majority of the feed or stick with the hybrids.

 

[hoping4better]

@Neil

I believe you are right, unfortunately. People never stopped to think along the way to figure out, "What would happen if everyone did it this way?" . . . It seems nearly every facet of our society suffers from our lack of forethought from sanitation departments, building authorities, hatcheries, gardening and crops, etc. We just run headlong after something because it meets an immediate desire and forget that there are often consequences to our actions.

That being said, there seems to be a resurgence of people moving to the country and trying to live the way they think their grandparents lived. Problem is I'm not sure what we imagine as the old society ever really existed as we wish it did. BUT, I think small farms and homesteads can raise their own and with special selection and time bring back some of what was lost.

As for the OP - my black sex linked rooster was REAL tasty (literally the BEST chicken soup I've ever had), but awful tough - I didn't let the meat rest at all and probably cooked him wrong for his age (17weeks or so).

 

[Neil Grassbaugh]

hoping4better

The very first people to abandond the agriculture of "the good old days" were the farmers of that time.
No one was any quicker at abandoning the old and taking up the new technology than farmers. They dumped povertey, drudgery and a bunch of other problems when they modenized. They traded that lifestyle for chickens that didn't taste as good, cows that didn't have names, apples without worms in them and a more promising future.
My grandparents came from those days too and their advice was always "never let time pass you by"
Since we can't go back (wish we could only because I would be younger again) I suggest that we concentrate on making the future better.
That is "hoping4better" isn't it?