Cornish over New Hampshire

[Mosey2003]

It's going to depend on the breeder. Good breeders will be keeping an eye towards production as well as keeping them physically to the type they should have. Some won't. Just like anything else, it will vary. Like, I could sell you a box of chicks from my first mating of these birds in the fall/winter, and those chicks might lay gangbuster, or quite poorly, because I don't know yet myself what I have in the pens.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You hit it on the head. If you can find a breeder that is breeding for your goals and knows what they are doing you will be way ahead with their stock. How to find that breeder is the challenge.

What are your goals in a meat bird? How important is size to you? There are only two of us, I can get two meals out of a pullet, thought the second one may be soup if the bird is pretty small. A larger bird just means I get leftover chicken for lunch. I don't sell my pullets so about half of what I eat is female anyway. To me great size is not that important but the size of my roosters is one of the factors I use when selecting which to keep for breeding.

At what age do you butcher? Different males mature at different rates. Early maturity is probably a trait you are looking for.

How do you feed them? Do you provide everything they at or do you let them forage for a reasonable part of their food? If you provide all the feed their feed to pounds conversion rate maybe important to you. If they forage it may be less important.

If you pluck instead of skin, a light colored bird gives a prettier carcass than a dark feathered bird. Is that important to you?

The more traits you breed for the harder it is to improve all those traits. You can go about it by selecting one trait at a time to concentrate on, then go for the next or try to pick the best overall. Either way it can take a while. You have mentioned meat and eggs. Are you selecting on behaviors too? Is it important if a hen goes broody, will you want to hatch her chicks to get more broodies? It can get complicated fast.

Not all breeders are the same. If a breeder is breeding for show only, they are certainly going to be very interested in the traits the judge sees. They may have very little interest in the traits the judge does not see. How fast they reach butcher size may not be as important as that they reach the proper size by show time. Egg laying may be way down on the selection criteria list. This is not true of all show chickens, some do breed for production and/or behaviors. Say you have a hen that could win a grand prize at a show but lays the wrong color of egg or lays a lot fewer eggs than the breed should. Would you breed her?

If you read the heritage chicken sites you will sometimes see them say that there are only a few flocks in the country that they consider heritage. Some of these are breeds that are in many chicken shows and those show chickens fully meet the SOP as far as the judge sees them. The difference is that for a chicken flock to be considered heritage they require them to meet the SOP but also to have the behavioral and production traits the breed is supposed to have. For many breeds hatcheries sell that may be only two or three flocks in the country.

To me there is no doubt that you will get a chicken that reaches a larger size than 99% of hatchery birds if you get the culls from a a successful show breeder, let alone their good birds. They will almost surely reach a decent size relatively early. Unless you feed them a show bird diet they may not reach the full size they could, but they will still be nice. Hatching eggs or even the culls may be worth it to you, though they may not be cheap.

Some people obsess over size when talking about meat birds. That aligns with their goals. Just think about what your goals are for your flock and use that for your selection criteria.

Good luck!

 

[Mosey2003]

Of interest to this discussion, I was absolutely stunned to find a new pullet egg in my growout pen last night, one of my exhibition birds laid They're just under 6 months old, that's astounding for heritage/heavy/exhibition birds. Two of them squatted while I was out there, so I'm pretty certain it wasn't even a glitch on the older halfbreds laying an extra. Out of curiosity, I then weighed my current first and second choice for breeders, #1 is 6lbs and #2 is 5.1lbs. Not too shabby, as the Standard calls for 6lb pullets and like I said, they're not even quite 6 months old yet.

So see, I got lucky finding the breeders I did, and got very respectable POL right out of the gate.

 

[Mosey2003]

I will also add, that while I'm talking about Barred Rocks because they're what I'm into, if you want early maturity and you do decide to go breeder vs. hatchery, I wouldn't recommend the barred. The males in particular mature more slowly because that's related to how nice and crisp the barring comes in. The NH would be my choice for meat regardless. Or Buckeyes. Or White Rocks, if someone wants Plymouth Rocks especially.

 

[Dr.Dale]

I was absolutely stunned to find a new pullet egg in my growout pen last night, one of my exhibition birds laid They're just under 6 months old, that's astounding for heritage/heavy/exhibition birds.

Hmm, I didn’t realize that was surprising. I have a batch of hatchery Plymouth Rocks that hatched on 29 January and they have been laying since 18 June. They definitely are not as big as yours, but I guess that shows the eggs vs meat breeding. Given that, I think that I will be ok with my starting point. It will be easier to measure weight than egg production, so I would rather start with good egg production and select for meat.

Some of my White Rocks were both among my largest and earliest laying birds. Hopefully, I can emphasize that.

 

[Mosey2003]

Hatchery lay earlier than heritage. Heritage/exhibition mature slower because they end up larger.
Here's my current choice pullet to breed:

 

[Dr.Dale]

Just think about what your goals are for your flock and use that for your selection criteria.

That is good advice. I think my goals, in order, are:

1) Vigor (healthy and active from dawn to dusk, with lots of foraging and little laziness)

2) 2 extra large brown eggs per 3 hens daily, POL by 20 weeks

3) 3 lb dressed weight no earlier than 12 weeks, but no later than 20.

4) Friendly, no human aggression, and no bloody fights.

5) Pretty, my wife to be the judge, not the SOP.

2 and 4 are already achieved, we just need to maintain them. The majority of the flock meets 1, and about half meet 5. We are furthest from 3.

 

[Ridgerunner]

5) Pretty, my wife to be the judge, not the SOP.

Wise man!!!

 

[Amosis16]

If you are looking for meat New Hampshires, check out the chicks from freedom ranger hatchery. The chicks they offer are from Art Nolls line. Art was a meat bird breeder and developed several meat strains. I have order several batches of chicks from them including a batch of New Hampshires and I have always been impressed with the vitality of the chickens when they arrive

 

[Egghead_Jr]

There's a factor here your overlooking- Return on feed cost.

If you market eggs and that's your niche is to sell fresh eggs then absolutely stay with hatchery birds. These birds can lay 9 or more days in a row before taking one day off and then lay again for over a week. It adds up. Purchase only pullets and sell eggs. Fair return to offset costs.

A true dual purpose bird will still give you 5-6 eggs a week, 200 per bird annual. Some breeds like New Hampshire up to 250 eggs annual. That's a fair amount of eggs. Easily more than a family can consume with only 6 hens. They will also lay that well into old age when many hatchery birds start to decline in third year. Where dual purpose comes into play is if your hatching your own and want a better carcass at butchering age. This 12-14 week mark is when you should be culling most of your cockerels. You can just as easily eat hatchery stock cockerels at that age but it will be scrawny. Better suited for pan frying or other method than grilling/broil. That's broiler age and if you wait longer the birds will be too tough to broil. They will also be eating a lot of feed. Hatchery stock or breeder stock, they will be eating a lot of feed. Your return on feed costs raising cockerels is to have a better carcass at broiler age. Beyond the culinary benefit it's better return on your costs to house and feed them.

The choice is yours and you can eat any chicken. If you use hatchery then I suggest you get the rainbow, also called Dixie Birds. That's a hybrid bird from hatchery made to fit the dual purpose niche. The thing with them is they won't breed true but with culling for fastest maturing first and second year you'd have fixed well your dual purpose line of birds. They are multi colored and no two feather the same so it should please your wife the flock looks diverse though they'd be your line of utility birds.

By Utility we mean bred for both high egg and meat value. Australorp where Australia' working of Orpington into better utility. Fair meat and high egg production. Australorps don't perform nearly as well as they did half a century ago. New Hampshire would be much better choice if breeding to SOP interested you. It's clear it does not so you should really look into getting Rainbow Dixie birds and breed them to utility.