Cornish Giant Questions

[Happydaze]

The original question was never covered, cockerels as good to eat as the pullets?
It's an old thread but I'm wondering!

 

[5 Acre Rooster]

As long as they are harvested at younger age they taste the same (to me) just size difference.

I think what people are not looking at with 30% is what is acceptable to the chicken farms for death loss. Every factory farm type animal, cow, chicken, pig or whatever farm is given an acceptable death loss %. They range differently by company and animal type. Cattle is normally 5% pigs 7-15% depends on whos who on the totem pole. Also remember these guys do like 50000 birds at a time and its mostly all done automatic. Hands on is not 100% like us smaller farms/raisers. A daily walk thru for dead birds and checking mechanics in building is all some of the farms do. If a computer don't BEEP they don't worry. Read up on people that have farmed for big growers, like Tyson. A few years ago there were a lot of articles on how bad the company treated people trying to contract their farms for them. Lawsuits flying everywhere, breach of contract, supplying diseased birds, all kinds of wrong going on.
In a multi-billion dollar industry there is always "acceptable loss". And at the quantities they do they have a huge discount on everything from chicks to feed and everything in between. So if they make $5 profit from a bird that cost $0.25 total how much is acceptable loss before they really lose. And some of the loss is not complete loss because they can sell culled/dead birds and even manure for purposes other than human consumption. Big companies have a lot of outlets for what we would see as waste. Not to mention the tax right off they get for death loss.