Breeding my own meat birds? How does one create a "meat bird"?

[Football chick]

I have Marans and Bresse along with some project birds. We became dual purpose with our birds as a means to have pullets to sell to the urban hen market and we needed a cockerel management system that wasn't wasteful. So, we eat them.

We stopped raising light/lean birds and went heavier with the breed varieties. Then I started tracking growth rate, body structure, development and tagging the boys who grew the fastest. At 16 weeks we start making the dinner selections, the smallest ones go first. That way, when it's time to pick a breeder bird from the finished results, the slow growers had already been removed.

Raising the purebreds gives predictable results. The project birds though, since I can look solely at the frame/growth and not have a care towards feathers/eggs/breed standards, those have been gaining in size at a faster rate from one generation to the next.

This boy was 2 pounds, 9 ounces at 7 weeks old. This week, at 8 weeks old, he's 3 pounds, 3 ounces. He's 50% Bresse, 25% Marans, 12.5% Legbar and 12.5% Twentse. I have no idea why he's SO big, but I'll take it and run with it!

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You don't have to use Cornish, is what I found out. I also found out that not every bloodline within a dual purpose breed has been bred with "table qualities" in mind.

Separating the chicks as they grow up by size helps the best for tweaking the growth rate in the subsequent generations.

The Bresse have been the best table bird we've had, ever. Delicate thin skin that crisps nicely. Mild dark meat on the thighs. Fat that melts like butter. Fuller breast than what's typical for Heritage type birds. I'll always keep a pure pen of them. Hybridizing them has been fun too, besides those incredibly dominant white feathers... that's a little annoying since I like color.

In the hybrids I hope to maintain the table qualities that the Bresse have, while improving what I can in growth rate and making them look a little bit different so that they eventually become my own consistent line.

that’s amazing that you got one to grow that fast

 

[RiverOtter]

Ridgerunner brings up a really good point about selection.

I have a Lavender Orp rooster from show lines and he is HUGE. But I wouldn't consider him a good breeder for a meat project, because I'm certain that it took him at least 10months or longer to get to his weight .... I don't wanna feed a meat bird for a year!

When I choose which of my muttly dual-purpose project birds to keep, my first "cull" is at a month. I look for the little roosters that are clearly roosters and band them. I want fast-maturing, easy to sex birds, so late bloomers never even get a chance to be considered for breeding.

Then, I start measuring at 10 weeks. Because I don't just want the heaviest birds, I want the one with the best gain and the most meat across the breast. I don't want heavy bones and thighs, I want breast meat.

By 16 weeks, I've picked my next rooster (and a couple of spares, just in case) because that's as long as I'm willing to feed an excess rooster. For any breeding project besides show, I don't care how big and pretty he'll get later on - I need them to be worth processing by the time I'm going to do it.

So if you decide to go with birds from a breeder, keep that in mind - that gorgeous, 15# show-winning rooster might have been a scrawny, bony, lanky thing at 3-4 months. And while hatchery birds are rarely as big and pretty, they've at least been selected for fast maturity. Selection of breeding stock is a balancing act, and choosing the point you're willing to start at can be hard.