BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[CanadianBuckeye]

I'm very impressed with your project Ipatelski. I've thought about doing the same thing to create a stabile Cornish type chicken with a goal of a 4 pound cleaned carcass at 12 weeks. I think a true breeding, medium growth Cornish would be the answer for many Homesteaders meat bird issues. I've had chickens for years but am just getting into the breeding, bui with other livestock we stabilize new composite breeds at 3/8. I'm thinking in this case it could be 3/8 Commercial Cornish and 5/8 Dark Cornish with selection for consistent medium growth rate. Of course these are just my pipe dreams of how I would do it but please keep posting. My energy has to go into my Dorking project for the immediate future, but I'm very interested in your results.

By the way, from what I've read the commercial Cornish crosses have significantly higher resistance to Mareks Disease because of Cornel's work in the mid 20th century. That could be a real asset to your strain.

One question: are you aware of the importance of selecting for earlier feathering? If not it should help you determine growth rate of individual birds within the first couple of weeks rather than waiting months for them to grow out.

Anthony

I agree I'm not sure why the goal for home grown chicken has to be a humongous turkey sized bird. I'm leaning towards smaller is better (who wants to eat the same chicken all week?) and I've been wondering if crossing bantam to standard cornish might be an idea. Or bantam cornish over dorking............

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

Back to eggs: There is a breeder in British Columbia (True North Farms) who has crossed Buckeyes with his home bred/high production RIR's . Apparently the cross lays very well, nice dark eggs and I plan to get some hatching eggs this spring.
This winter has been brutal for humidity, not very cold though but even so my single combed hens have frostbite- the coldest it got in the coop was -6oC. No way you can get the humidity down in the coop without heating when the outdoors humidity is in the 80% range. This cross will have a hybrid pea/single comb so this will solve a lot of those issues.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

An afterthought: Here's the True North farm blog, where chickens are bred for production- this might be of interest to anyone keen on production: http://truenorthfarm.ca/blog/

 

[Beer can]

I agree I'm not sure why the goal for home grown chicken has to be a humongous turkey sized bird. I'm leaning towards smaller is better (who wants to eat the same chicken all week?)  and I've been wondering if crossing bantam to standard cornish might be an idea. Or bantam cornish over dorking............

Can't fit a beer can in them if they're too small...Lol

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

With regard to tilapia flavor, I'll add that if you've just had grocery store tilapia, you haven't had the opportunity to get the true good taste of tilapia. For a while, one of the booths at our farmer's market was run by a family that raised tilapia, lettuce, and herbs in an aquaponics set up. They would fillet late the night before and bring the fillets to the market early that morning. Tasted amazing, and completely different than standard frozen tilapia.

The fact that they stopped doing it (I think someone in the family had health issues and they couldn't keep it up) was the reason I first started looking into it - so I could start getting that super fresh fish again. My mother had a similar experience going to an asian market in her town where you pick the live fish in a tank, and they kill it and clean it for you. She was blown away by how good it tasted compared to the standard "boring" tilapia...

- Ant Farm

 

[bnjrob]

Quote:
It's the fast food mindset - super sized and done in 15 seconds. The antique cookbooks that I have don't talk about using huge birds, or any gigantic cuts of meat for that matter. They'll say something like "take a 3 lb hen". Most of society has a very different mindset than what is reality and some refuse to change their expectations even after they find out the truth about raising their own food.

 

[DesertChic]

@DesertChic I always threw bluegill in the bushes when I caught them, or rotted them down for liquid fertilizer, I was after yellow perch. Then I had someone tell me they would rather eat a bluegill any day before a trout, I've been filleting them out ever since, mmm good, small ones I grind up whole bones guts head scales everything but the hook, cook on the side burner on my grill and feed to the chickens, they love bluegill burgers... Bluegill are sweeter than perch, just as good if not better than crappie or northern pike, and tastier than tilapia IMO ( I've only ate cheap tilapia frozen in the big bags, and whatever tilapia they serve for Denny's Tilapia Ranchero, only time I had fish tacos at a restaurant it was tilapia battered and fried, I think they put way to much fresh cilantro on them, it's not lettuce, they were good though, soft taco) which brings me to my favorite tilapia/perch/bluegill/crappie recipe quick marinade, more of a just dip it in or brush it on so you still taste the fish, little soy sauce mixed with a little liquid smoke and as many dashes of tabasco as you need to tickle your tastebuds and throw the fillets on the grill, forms a nice dark hot smoky salty crust on the outside, tender white juicy flavor in the inside. Wife usually just puts fillets in aluminum foil with a little butter and salt and pepper and bakes them.Good, but I prefer BEER battered and fried, or grilled. That dude that said he'd rather eat a bluegill over a trout any day?, yeah I found out they are delicious, but I'd take some fresh caught trout or salmon, grilled over a wood fire, not propane, any day over a whitefish. Back to the hybrid bluegill, they are 80-90% male, some people use them because regular bluegill breed rapidly in ponds and if they use regular bluegill and they get overpopulated it stunts their growth. The hybrids slows down the population. Not sure if the hybrid would be better in your situation, I don't think they get bigger, only bigger because less populated, I think in your situation you could control population with regular bluegill. Don't know how fast they grow compared to tilapia, my guess is tilapia is better faster cheaper (not flavor but growth), otherwise they wouldn't be so popular with the $ makers.

LOL! Yeah....I remember as a kid my father always threw back the bluegill in favor of perch, bass and walleye, so I've never eaten one myself. Honestly I'm not sure I could even get bluegill out here. If the Tilapia fail to reproduce I may have to research Bluegill.

 

[DesertChic]

With regard to tilapia flavor, I'll add that if you've just had grocery store tilapia, you haven't had the opportunity to get the true good taste of tilapia. For a while, one of the booths at our farmer's market was run by a family that raised tilapia, lettuce, and herbs in an aquaponics set up. They would fillet late the night before and bring the fillets to the market early that morning. Tasted amazing, and completely different than standard frozen tilapia.

The fact that they stopped doing it (I think someone in the family had health issues and they couldn't keep it up) was the reason I first started looking into it - so I could start getting that super fresh fish again. My mother had a similar experience going to an asian market in her town where you pick the live fish in a tank, and they kill it and clean it for you. She was blown away by how good it tasted compared to the standard "boring" tilapia...

- Ant Farm

And isn't that the truth about food across the board? Nothing tastes better than fresh, and especially home grown.

 

[dfr1973]

I agree I'm not sure why the goal for home grown chicken has to be a humongous turkey sized bird. I'm leaning towards smaller is better (who wants to eat the same chicken all week?) and I've been wondering if crossing bantam to standard cornish might be an idea. Or bantam cornish over dorking............

As someone who has never really been fond of the flavor of turkey, I am looking to replace it with wonderfully flavorful chicken, so I am working towards nice large Wyandotte capons. I am also pretty good at stretching a bird for several meals, and hubby has always been impressed with that. He is now impressed with the canned chicken, as well. Finally, I really don't enjoy slaughtering. It's a necessary task, but I don't want to be slaughtering more than I need to, so larger birds = more meals per bird = less slaughtering.

Just another viewpoint in the mix.

 

[hellbender]