best breeds for fryers

[chickenman7]

What is the best meat birds besides Cornish X Rocks?

 

[greyfields]

Fryer means a lot of things to different people. Before the genetics on meat chickens were figured out, fryers were the male leghorns which were hatched by the big egg producers. They would run them to 3 pounds live weight, then sell them as "young tender fryers" who were quite young. It was a way to utilize the males, rather than mechanically macerating them as they do now.

Since I'll be breeding my own layers now, too, the thought of marketing a fryer has its appeal. But, I will be doing many different breeds and cross breeds, so I can't give advice on anything in particular. Except, you could probably use any breed and get similar resulsts... but in the end, all purebreeds are going to seem a bit thin and weedy compared to the Cornish X.

 

[silkiechicken]

Quote:
How long did it take them to get the male leghorn to 3lbs live? It took me almost a year to get my commercial leghorn boy to not even 4 lbs live... he was just 3 lbs dressed including head, feet and the choice internals! I guess if they have shaved off two weeks in making broilers in the past few decades, I wouldn't be surprised if they shaved off a lb in weight from the production leghorn!

 

[greyfields]

I have no idea. But if you look at photos of meat chickens from only 50 years ago, you will be shocked. They look like hens to me. I was just reading a french cookbook from the 50's and it was describing using a barnyard chicken stating an average dressed weight of 2.5 pounds. This was typically what people ate as chicken until very recently (excluding capons). We're amazingly spoiled.

 

[Windy Ridge]

I've never done the meat bird thing myself, but I was always curious about the Freedom Rangers, simply because they're reputed to have so many fewer leg problems and so forth than Cornish X.

 

[greyfields]

I just processed 30 freedom rangers on Tuesday. Well, had procesesd for me. Zero mortality from disease on them; which come off Cornish X's (and having a real bad 'taste in my mouth') they re-excited me to be raising pastured chicken.

 

[Windy Ridge]

Really? Which variety or varieties did you try, and how did they taste in comparison to the usual Cornish X? (Or maybe you haven't tried them, yet.)

I wish we had a processor around here.

 

[greyfields]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=12691