best breeds for eating?

[lazy gardener]

Ridge runner: I like your plan. I'm headed in a similar direction, with the added requirement that my birds must be pea or rose combed. This year's flock additions include Rose comb brown leghorn, SLW, and Dominique. I'm growing Pioneers from the hatchery for meat this year. If I get a nice hen, I might hold her over to beef up my flock. I have EE, RIR, from last year that will be added to the mix. Also, If I keep a barred component in my hens, I may be able to move towards a completely auto-sexing DP green/olive egger. I have very limited resources in terms of breeding pens, and will most likely only keep 1 - 2 roosters, so am not terribly driven in terms of reaching my long term goal, but I'm having a blast in the mean time. IMO, an incubator is a necessity for any flockster who wants to be independent of hatcheries. That way, you can set some eggs along with the broody, and be prepared to take over if the broody is unable to complete her task, or if she has a poor hatch, she can then foster your incubated chicks.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I only keep one rooster and 7 or 8 breeding hens, so yeah, it is real slow. I'm getting there on the colors but the productivity traits are more of a challenge. I don't know if I'll stick with it or not, on the colors. I still want the green eggs and productivity traits, but they are all starting to look alike. I'm finding that kind of boring. I'm tempted to get a buff rooster, probably Wyandotte for conformation, and concentrate on productivity traits instead of color/pattern. Throwing in a buff to my mix should really make for some interesting colors/patterns a couple of generations down the road.

 

[LindaB220]

Well done on your progress getting more broodies and thanks for the advice. Will just be getting an incubator I reckon.
What breed do you have?
Think I will either go for jersey giants or light sussex

Lt Sussex are a fortune over here. I'd definitely go with them because the taste is great and they go broody. Of course, nobody goes broody like the Dorkings. Ha

 

[paddyg84]

Well sussex aren't dear. Possibly thinking sussex hens and Cornish rooster. Or perhaps all sussex that way I could sell surplus chicks as pure breeds. How soon do sussex come on for slaughter and do they make decent weight? I don't need them to be massive it's only me my wife and son so a roasting bird to feed two and a half would be perfect.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Dual purpose breeds were developed to lay a fair amount of eggs and make a reasonable meat bird. They don’t lay as efficiently as chickens like leghorns that were developed specifically for laying eggs, partly because they have to eat more to maintain their larger bodies. They don’t gain weight and size as fast as chickens bred to specialize in meat like the Cornish X or Rangers. They are reasonable at both but not as good in either one as the specialists.

Different people butcher at different ages. The older a chicken gets the more you are limited on your cooking methods. You can eat any chicken at any age, but you have to use age-appropriate methods to cook them, generally speaking the older they are the slower you cook them and the more moisture is required. With very young birds you can fry them or grill them, but as they age those methods change. Coq au Vin or chicken and dumplings are traditional ways to cook and old rooster and make him delicious.

Some people may butcher dual purpose chickens at 12 weeks or in that vicinity so they can fry them. There is extremely little meat there. I like to wait until at least 18 weeks and prefer a little older but I don’t fry or grill. They will keep growing some for several months afterwards but their rate of growth slows quite a bit after the 20 to 22 week age bracket.

How you feed them makes a difference too. If you feed them a higher protein diet, they will grow faster and bigger.

For thousands of years many farmer’s wives have fed some pretty large families on barnyard mix birds. Often these are chickens that forage for their own feed and don’t grow very large. They often have some game mixed in with them so they can forage better and do better at avoiding predators. Games are not really that large. There are various things you can do to stretch a chicken. Neck, back, gizzard, heart, and liver may be pieces of chicken served with what people think of as the standard pieces. When Mom fried a chicken, all these pieces except heart were on the dinner table. Stews are a great way to stretch a chicken to feed a lot of people. How many people can a chicken feed? How many do you want it to feed?

I raise a barnyard mix. The cockerels make a pretty decent sized meal at 18 to 222 weeks but the pullets are fairly small. It’s just my wife and me. I’ll cook the breasts, wishbone, drumsticks, and thighs for our Thursday meal. Even with a small pullet we have enough of that meat left over to eat in soup on Saturday night. If it is a cockerel, I may have enough meat left over for an additional one or two lunches for me.

I also use the back, neck, feet, gizzard, wings, and heart to make broth. I know feet are dirty, but if you scald them without overdoing it the toenails and spurs twist off easily and you can peel the skin off the feet. If you overscald them he skin tears but if you get it right it comes off pretty easily. That gets them clean enough for me to use but I know some people still wouldn’t be able to get over the YUK! Factor.

After the broth is cooked, usually overnight in a crock pot, I pick the meat off the bones. A lot of the meat has cooked off the bone and is just floating around. You have to be careful or you can get small bones so it may not be good for very young children, but that meat is great for tacos, soup, stews, casseroles, pizza topping, or chicken salad. I often use this meat to make a sandwich for lunch.

I braise them unless they are a few years old, then I normally use a different method. I coat the chicken pieces in dried herbs like oregano and basil, maybe add thyme and/or parsley, and put that in a covered baking dish with just a very little water. I cook that at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for maybe 2-1/2 hours. Length of time varies by age and sex. I’m very happy with the results.

 

[paddyg84]

Thanks so much for the info. I'm very into cookery so coming up with ways to cook them will be fun.

 

[Farmer Viola]

I raise a barnyard mix. The cockerels make a pretty decent sized meal at 18 to 222 weeks but the pullets are fairly small. It’s just my wife and me. I’ll cook the breasts, wishbone, drumsticks, and thighs for our Thursday meal. Even with a small pullet we have enough of that meat left over to eat in soup on Saturday night. If it is a cockerel, I may have enough meat left over for an additional one or two lunches for me.

Ridgerunner thanks so much for all the valuable information! When you butcher at 18 to 22 weeks, have they begun crowing yet? I was planning to butcher the males before they crow, at about 16 weeks old. By waiting longer they grow larger, but does the hormonal change affect the meat in your opinion?
I raised this breed once before and they crowed at 17 weeks, so that's how I landed on 16.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I've had some crow at 11 weeks, a real squeaky sound that they should be ashamed of. Some wait a lot longer but one or two are practically always trying by 15 to 16 weeks. Some mature a lot faster than others. The early ones feather out nicely and get bigger faster. They are normally trying to mate the pullets by 15 to 16 weeks so they are sexually mature.

On the other hand, some mature pretty slowly. They feather out slower and don't grow as fast. When I butcher them at say 18 weeks, the early ones have sexual organs pretty much the size of a mature rooster. The really late ones may have gonads about the size of a green pea. It varies by the individual.

I'm sure the hormonal change affects the meat, but I think age has a pretty strong effect too. Older pullets have a better flavor than young ones. It's not just the males.

 

[LindaB220]

Well sussex aren't dear. Possibly thinking sussex hens and Cornish rooster. Or perhaps all sussex that way I could sell surplus chicks as pure breeds. How soon do sussex come on for slaughter and do they make decent weight? I don't need them to be massive it's only me my wife and son so a roasting bird to feed two and a half would be perfect.

Not real sure about processing time. Anywhere from 14 wks for fryers or up to 24 wks for roasters. One good thing about the sussex is the taste and also it has a lot of breast meat. A mixture of sussex and cornish would give you hybrid vigor. Larger and faster. A lot to think about. But yes keep a few for selling pure breds.

 

[Maggiesdad]

All chicken is good, anytime. It's just what you do with it in preparation. The best thing that happened for me was getting past the idea that the carcass had to look a certain way, or have X amount of meat on it. If you have small panfish, and a big dinner, then you need a mess of them. Little chickens are no different than panfish, quail, dove or squirrel... they just come in smaller packages. This PDF helped me a lot. And Yellow House Farm's posts on spatchcocking were a blessing for 8-10wk culling of standard breeds.