BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

You have to factor in waste, but it is hard to know what that is. For the average backyarder, it is in the range of a startling 20%. It can be more or less, depending on the keeper. If the feeders are over bedding, it does not hurt to let them run out once per week. The will scratch through and dig some of it out. It is not a fix all, but it helps.

Until you are settled, do not worry about it. You can simply count the 50lb bags they consume, and consider the dressed weight of the birds you process. multiply that by the quantity of birds you grew out, and you have what you need. It is only an average, but that is all you need. It is for information only.

That is all any of it is, informing. Once you have that picture in your mind, you start having a more informed view. We base a lot of what we know on perception, and it is not helpful. It is misleading. Until we formally go through the process, we do not know. We think we know, but we do not know. It is kind of like when the teacher asks us if we studied, but she knows by the answer we answered confidently.

Speaking of waste...my capons are situated where they can get in with the dairy goats and glean the dropped/slopped feed from them. Few farm animals are more trifling and wasteful than a darned goat!!
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Speaking of waste...my capons are situated where they can get in with the dairy goats and glean the dropped/slopped feed from them. Few farm animals are more trifling and wasteful than a darned goat!!
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I had already planned to put cockerels and capons out back in the goat enclosure to range around ... now I may have an added bonus to that idea? Kewl ...
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Thanks for the vote of confidence in the qualities present in oriental games. For what I can do in my back yard, I can put a better cockerel in the freezer with a large oriental crossed on a dual purpose hen, than the results I saw with hatchery cornishes in the same setting. I might have done better with more of a "typey" Cornish, but from what I can gather, they might not be as easy to keep going as my orientals. My main goal in the Asil Dorking cross is just the coolness factor of seeing what kind of heterosis will come out of these two ancient breeds. It might really nick. I might call them "true heritage broilers", but only in my own freezer.

I like the orientals, and they really tickle my fancy. But one can only tolerate so many of these, and it's hard to say no to hens that gather up rocks and old light bulbs to sit on. This past season, I put them to work rebuilding my layer flock. I have some dorkings, some buff orpington/red sex link cross, Leghorns in exchequer, some blue laced red wyandottes and a couple easter egger pullets. Next year I will be setting up some breeding pens with pure egg layers as well as some oriental crosses for just meat. The ones that I crossed before were on white leghorns and welsummers, so hoping for even better results from things like Wyandotte and the BO crosses.


You are crossing the right way. People ask which way to cross, and I try to explain the wife's tails and tell them that the inheritance is equal. There are only practical considerations. In this case the dual purpose hen is a better layer, so it would be easier to get a qty. of feet on the ground. Not to mention that some Oriental hens might reject a less vigorous cock, or even kill him. LOL.

Historically, the English Game and the Dorking was a popular cross.

I like the Orientals to. They cannot be beat concerning survivability. They are tough customers. A friend of mine lets his stags run until it I necessary to pen them up individually. They run the woods etc. He only throws enough corn to keep them coming back and close.

The trick to a good cross is to have everything possible (that you are looking for) on both sides, and at least one side.

An over looked concept in all of the chatter, is that small birds are faster to mature. An example is that bantams mature faster.

We like to think bigger is better but, a nice Reza Asil is something to think about. A niche not filled is a smaller meat cross. It is hard to have a more economic meat bird in the backyard. That is where it would be if it could be had.
 
When I first started out I did what grandma said, I got barred rocks, austrolorps and RIR, hatched in the spring, butchered in the late summer through fall. Noticed that the meat was tough. For a while I concerned myself with the differences in hatchery birds from the year 2000 and grandma's 1950's models. I was convinced that the chickens had somehow been horribly transformed. What I learned, as I handled meat and processed chickens, is that it is not the chickens that have changed, so much as people's knowledge of what to do with them. Meat must age, as much as we raise our foods and pride ourselves on freshness, for it to be tender, it must be either extremely young, extremely fat or it must hang for a while. When I started thinking of my grandma shoving chickens in a crock sunk in springwater instead of a fridge, and reading of market hunting in the days of wagons and birds hanging in market square, this was driven home. You can let your birds get old enough to have meat on them, and it won't be a waste of feed if they are eating bugs and weed seeds and what they can find behind the pigs and the cows. But unless you want shoe leather jerky, you have to let it age. Flavor from pastured, heritage birds cannot be matched, and aged properly you can have them turn out pretty tender.
 
When I first started out I did what grandma said, I got barred rocks, austrolorps and RIR, hatched in the spring, butchered in the late summer through fall. Noticed that the meat was tough. For a while I concerned myself with the differences in hatchery birds from the year 2000 and grandma's 1950's models. I was convinced that the chickens had somehow been horribly transformed. What I learned, as I handled meat and processed chickens, is that it is not the chickens that have changed, so much as people's knowledge of what to do with them. Meat must age, as much as we raise our foods and pride ourselves on freshness, for it to be tender, it must be either extremely young, extremely fat or it must hang for a while. When I started thinking of my grandma shoving chickens in a crock sunk in springwater instead of a fridge, and reading of market hunting in the days of wagons and birds hanging in market square, this was driven home. You can let your birds get old enough to have meat on them, and it won't be a waste of feed if they are eating bugs and weed seeds and what they can find behind the pigs and the cows. But unless you want shoe leather jerky, you have to let it age. Flavor from pastured, heritage birds cannot be matched, and aged properly you can have them turn out pretty tender.
How do you age yours?
 
I age mine in as controlled of an environment as I can. I have a dedicated meat fridge that doesn't get opened often set just above freezing. For a heritage bird that's somewhere between 16 weeks and 24 weeks I find that around 7 days will be about right, maybe 10 if it's older. If you had it in a fridge that you were getting meals out of and opening and closing where it would not stay as cold, obviously it wouldn't take as long. What you are going for is natural enzyme breakdown and bacterial breakdown of muscle fibers. Happens more rapidly at higher temperatures. Going too far can be bad, so at low temperatures too far is an increment of days, versus hours at higher temperatures. From what I know now, I'm sure grandma did it in the woodshed or in a crock with water flowing around it and went by her nose. Once you know what it smells like when it's gone too far, and when it's just right, the nose is a powerful tool.

Sometimes, to make use of cockerels, I do a "salvage harvest", say with a batch of straight run Leghorns. As soon as you can tell them apart, that is when it is economically feasible to butcher, they will never be a broiler, so no point wasting feed. I skin them, cut out the breast with bone in, and the thighs with legs attached. The back, wings and neck go for pet food or in the broth pot. There is not much on the leg quarters and breast, but it is meat, and pretty good meat at that. They are pretty tender at that age, so 4 days in the fridge will age them plenty.

Just remember, you need to cook it, so that all of those wonderful organisms that pre-chewed your tough meat for you get killed. This is why it is not done this way commercially, because you can't count on everyone following this last step. Obviously aging overly contaminated meat would be bad, too. I prefer not to introduce any more water than neccesary, but if there is a breech of digestive tract, it needs to be rinsed thoroughly.
 
....And remember, freezing is not aging. If the meat is below freezing, the aging process is not happening. I've heard people say they let it rest a couple days and then it ages a couple more days while it thaws out. It needs to be thawed for it to age. It always seemed to me that it turned out best aged and then frozen and then thawed just enough to cook.
 
I age the tough ones in a crock pot, on low for eight to ten hrs. Bones pull out with ease.

Just did one the other day left in the vacuum seal bag with water in crock pot. Fall apart tender, and about 20oz of pure not watered down broth. Cut a hole in the corner of the bag and poured the broth out while hot into a 24oz jar, left in fridge until fat hardened on top and could be scooped off. Then made home made chicken noodle soup!
 
Any chicken that gets processed whole here usually gets baked or fried. Birds that are older than 8 months don't see a crockpot, they get parted out and canned. Canner will do the same work as a crockpot and you can pop a jar open anytime you want it. Doesn't waste valuable freezer space either. But yes, the crockpot can work miracles.
 

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