Best meat birds, NOT Cornish cross

[Parront]

My worry with the Cornish cross and other chickens bred to grow is not necessarily early harvest. It’s late.

If you don't mind crowing, you can wait until 5-6 months old to process the dual purpose cockerels. Depending on the breed, they can start crowing pretty young. The Barred Hollands I am raising one is already trying to crow, 8 weeks old. At this age, they are more of a game-hen size, about 18 oz dressed. Leghorns also start crowing young about 10 weeks for the Brown Leghorns I used to keep. I agree, they were worth eating. They did not get a lot bigger after they started crowing, and they were a lot more trouble -- fighting and mating the pullets. 12 weeks was as old as most of them got. So, where I am going with this is, a late harvest can be trouble with some cockerels, too!

 

[speedy2020]

It seems Freedom Ranger will fit most people need if you want to growth little faster than dual purpose. To get the chicken more active, just put the feed and water 15 feet + apart. You can move feed and water closer about 1-2weeks before processing date to fat them up.

 

[Stephanie8806]

I appreciate that. My problem is that I don't have a lot of extra freezer space, especially during summer when I'm freezing tomatoes, berries, and other stuff until I have enough to make tomato sauce, jelly, or whatever. I save bones and carcass parts to make broth. I often have to can a batch of broth or sauce before I can butcher more chickens. Just managing freezer space.

With your experience with game birds, you don't know how old they are so you have to be careful how you cook them. The advantage with chickens is that you at least know how old they are so you have more options on how to cook them.

Something you might consider is to get one of those meat bird selections from a hatchery. These are the extra males they get when they hatch, most people want pullets instead of cockerels so they always have a lot of extra cockerels and they sell the chicks relatively cheap. You don't know what breeds you will get but read it carefully to make sure they are dual purpose males. Decide which of them suits you best for breeding. Plus you get to eat all the others.

I have a ton of freezer space, but we are notorious for biting off more projects than we can chew every year I wouldn’t want to lose track of time and have a bunch of projects overlapping and have a harvest get pushed out(and cause the birds that were supposed to be harvested early to suffer)

That’s a great idea! We have been planning on getting some roosters, as all we have are hens currently. Be a good chance to see which ones have the best behavior

 

[WNYfarmfresh]

My Brahma Cockerel was just under 20# @ 10 months. Hens were 12-15# also Right at the 10 month mark. These are my heritage meat breeders. I will snap a picture of a 4 week old Brahma next to one of my 4 week Cornish.

 

[Compost King]

they need to be harvested within a narrow window. I’d be completely happy with a bird that is ready to harvest by 20-24weeks, but could go longer if things got busy or if we wanted to break up the butchering.

The Freedom Ranger or other free ranging type of meat birds would fit these qualifications and you can process them earlier than 20 weeks with a decent amount of meat and you can keep them alive and happy for much longer too. The ones I had (Red Rangers from TSC which is likely Hoover Hatchery) the males were eat'n size by 12 weeks and I kept the females alive for a year or longer. I bred the females with Heritage breeds and their offspring were sizable by week 15. They have a growth rate similar to CX but not the odd breast heavy shape. Keeping meat birds alive for too long even the Rangers means that you are paying an awful lot in feed that does not get converted into meat. If thats not a problem to you then they sound like the perfect meat bird for you. You can even breed them although I believe its cheaper to just buy new ones since you end up paying for feed to keep breeders alive. I personally am willing to pay a little more just to have control over reproduction. I do not like be dependent on others.

 

[nao57]

Interesting! Do you know how long it takes them to get to full size? I’m wondering if the amount of extra food it would take to get them to grow would be worth the extra 2 pounds of meat or so!

I think part of this question depends upon the ease of if you can produce and gain chicks easily.

In our modern society we'd taken for granted how easy we could use tools and machines to produce live chicks. But when you actually try to incubate your own chicks, you see its a lot harder than it appears to produce the chicks we get.

So some of this may be determined by the stability of food transportation logistics.

Although it may be fun for research sake also to compare the cost and gains of growing them the extra time to full size with this breed, or another, with assumptions in the experiment of doing both ways; if you can and can't easily have your own chicks brought in.

Its fun to think about stuff like this. And this is how you learn.

So you brought up a good question.

 

[RUNuts]

You can even breed them although I believe its cheaper to just buy new ones since you end up paying for feed to keep breeders alive. I personally am willing to pay a little more just to have control over reproduction. I do not like be dependent on others.

Did you get the information on the USPO changes? Ideal sent a request to sign a petition. The proposed Postal code changes basically make it illegal to ship live chicks. The hatcheries were going to have to find a different way to deliver birds. Business killer.

Does anyone have an update? This was several months ago and I don't know what was decided.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

This is the current section 526 of the Postal Code (summary) re: Birds:

USPS 526

If there has been a change proposed and recorded in the Federal Register, I can't find it - and without complying with the APA, including the mandatory Notice and Comment period, any significant change to the agency interpretations of this area of Code, or to the Code itself, are doomed to die a horrible death in the Courts.

Below find the 2020 publications to the Federal Register re: USPS operations:

FedReg 2020
FedReg 2019

 

[WNYfarmfresh]

My Brahma Cockerel was just under 20# @ 10 months. Hens were 12-15# also Right at the 10 month mark. These are my heritage meat breeders. I will snap a picture of a 4 week old Brahma next to one of my 4 week Cornish.

So here is a size comparison. Four week Cornish/Light Brahma. Notice the considerable size difference. Keep in mind however, the Brahma consumes nowhere near as much as the Cornish aka garbage disposal. I haven’t done an exhaustive study.... but I would venture to say that to grow out a Brahma 8-10 months with free range time, you’ll see almost double the weight on equal to or less than the same amount of feed.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Those are HUGE weights on the Brahma. Are the Buffs bigger than the Dark? You've got good bloodlines, that's clear. Mine are from TSC (so Hoover Hatchery), there will be breeding choices in the coming generations to try and bulk up a bit. My biggest would have to put on almost 15# in the next 6 months to match yours. Was expecting 12lb +/- on the males, a bit less on the hens.

I call my cX "Frankenchickens" - they already match or outweigh my Pekin ducks, same age.