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.
