Best tasting heritage breed meat chickens????

[sms1225]

I am interested in hearing from anyone who raises heritage breed chickens for meat. What breeds do you raise and how old are they when you butcher? How is the taste? I do not want cornish X . I would like a breed that I can raise naturally and grow naturally.

Thanks

 

[Compost King]

Great information in these old threads!

I have read this one many times and from way back before I even had a screen name in BYC. This is the first time I read it after having and sampling the meat of some of these breeds. I honestly can not tell much of a difference in flavor but I do like how the dorking has a long breast so even if they are not fleshed out and a little skimpy you still get quite a bit of breast meat. I would love to see a taste test with all the different varieties of free range meat birds that have bene gaining in popularity over the last 5 or 10 years.

 

[trudyg]

Silly me, I thought they would all taste like chicken.....

 

[popcornpuppy]

Quote:
It depends on how much meat I have, and how long I want to feed it to the dogs. I have 6 dogs, so one bird may be a meal for one night to feed all 6. I do feed my guys raw food from time to time if it can be consumed in 2 days or less......bones and all.
One day we processed 9 birds, so I had to freeze some and I made some "dog stew." I quartered the chickens, cooked them in a pot with water to get the meat off of the bones (cooked bones are bad because they become brittle from cooking and splinter easily). I added green beans, carrots, peas and brown rice. It sounds like soup, but I cooked most of the moisture out. I took the chicken quarters out of the pot and ran the meat through the food processor. This way I can mix it in to the stew and be sure that each portion has an equal amount of meat in it.

I think feeding raw or cooked is personal choice, so I am not going to say one is better than the other. I'm just trying to show the versatility in using chickens to feeds dogs.

 

[green_thumb]

Great information in these old threads!

 

[cw]

I dont know about a heritage breed but , I really suggest a standard breed, barred rocks and speckled sussex are wonderful birds to keep, matter of fact you may get a roo from each that you may not wanmt to eat, plus they are great layers


ok heres what we do roughly as per season (keeping the roo approx 16 weeks or 3-4 months)

spring
let any hens that want to brood, brood (as production starts to pick up as far as layin goes)
order chicks in the mail, and raise anything we need to purchase, (its turkey season so that puts some fresh turkey in the freezer)
any roo in the fall from last year should be big enough for the freezer, in a couple of week the hens from the same group should be getting to lay
(it takes roughly about 20 weeks for them to lay)



summer
letting hens brood
if any of the spring bunch is ready to go ill take em
(they would have to be first thing in the spring)
neighbors usaully buying hens as fast as we can get them feathered out


fall
same, but my do batch of cornish x to make up for more hens then roos hatched


now winter gets kinda tricky
anything that causes problems (roos and any unwanted animaL gets dispatched)
I like to process in the winter as naturally you have more fridge space as cooler temps, and birds are hoitting the feed more
all our birds free range all year long

to maybe to save a lot of typing
if you have birds that will brood, and you let them youll have more chicken then you will know what to do with,
if your raising chickens for meat for you and friends like your doing your eggs, your gonna need to order some chicks in the mail,

 

[cw]

we butcher all unwanted roos (the ones that attack the kids) and its plenty for us, seems like im always killin chickens, for the deep freezer

that is a 3 point grader blade to the right of him, he is huge thats the speckeled sussex roo, we got

 

[cw]

oh yea what ever you go with will be 100 times better then store bought

 

[sms1225]

At what age do you butcher the sussex or barred rocks?

Thanks for all your comments!

 

[sms1225]

Do you raise them just for meat purposes? I currently have 48 laying hens. RIR, Wyandottes and Black Austrolopes. I purchased them for laying mainly. I thought later when the production really decreased I could butcher. but based on comments in this forum, it seems like 1 1/2 year old chickens are good for the pressure cooker only. so I'm trying to decide how I should go about raising really good tasting standard chickens.

Thanks for your ideas.