As a husband you understand your job is to obey the voices in her head. Wise man!
I’m guessing that what you call yardbirds are pretty small, they probably have a lot of game in them. That is extremely common with the birds the pioneers took anywhere or the feral flocks that were there when the area was settled. Those are the kinds of birds that fed small farmers both eggs and meat for thousands of years. It sounds like yours are smaller than the commercial layers. Totally normal.
The commercial layers are bred to be pretty small but lay a lot of nice large eggs. With their small bodies they are really efficient at converting what they eat to eggs instead of using it to maintain a larger body. It’s a shame you can’t get hold of a true dual purpose rooster, he’s be a monster compared to what you have to work with.
Hybrids are a cross between two specific breeds or specific lines so you know what you are getting from the cross. Technically the parents of the layers are not a breed because no one has written up an SOP so they can be shown but genetically they can be considered a breed. Your yardbirds are not hybrids, they are chickens that have interbred for generations, probably hundreds of years if not more, with no one trying to create a breed out of them. They probably have some size and conformation consistency but you can get a real rainbow of colors and patterns. A typical barnyard mix that has been around for thousands of years.
Do your yardbirds go broody? I admire you building your own incubator, but maybe if you find a broody yardbird you can exchange your eggs for the ones she is hatching? Just a thought.
You do not have great stock to begin with for meat, both of your options are fairly small chickens. Do you have anyone on the island that shows dual purpose chickens? If you could get a reject cockerel from them you could inject a huge difference in size in your flock in a very few generations. But you have to work with what you have, both breeds and other restrictions.
Like the others my suggestion is to eat the ones you don’t want to eat and breed the ones you would like to eat as well as you can for better meat production. Since you can only get females of those hybrid layers that may mean you keep breeding to them until you get your own hens that are better than them. Your goal is not to have a huge carcass at a young age, with your stock you can’t achieve that, but I think all you are after is a better eating bird than you have now. Your plan should achieve that. With them free ranging and interbreeding as they will you face some restrictions. Eat as many of those inferior cockerels as you can. I eat my inferior hens and pullets too but it sounds like that may be a challenge for you.
For what it is worth Dad raised chickens a lot like you describe, they also had a lot of game in them. But every 5 or 6 years he’d get some dual purpose breeds to mix with them to improve the overall stock. We ate a lot of eggs and Mom could turn one of those chickens into a gourmet meal. She was a farm girl that could cook. I don’t know her tricks so I can’t come close to doing what she could, but you might look up Coq au Vin, that’s how a French chef would turn a mature rooster into a gourmet meal. Use a recipe that marinates them in wine. The older chickens are usually best in dishes like chicken ‘n dumplings, stews, or soup. They need to be cooked slowly and with moisture, never get above a slow simmer.
Good luck and have fun with the project.
I’m guessing that what you call yardbirds are pretty small, they probably have a lot of game in them. That is extremely common with the birds the pioneers took anywhere or the feral flocks that were there when the area was settled. Those are the kinds of birds that fed small farmers both eggs and meat for thousands of years. It sounds like yours are smaller than the commercial layers. Totally normal.
The commercial layers are bred to be pretty small but lay a lot of nice large eggs. With their small bodies they are really efficient at converting what they eat to eggs instead of using it to maintain a larger body. It’s a shame you can’t get hold of a true dual purpose rooster, he’s be a monster compared to what you have to work with.
Hybrids are a cross between two specific breeds or specific lines so you know what you are getting from the cross. Technically the parents of the layers are not a breed because no one has written up an SOP so they can be shown but genetically they can be considered a breed. Your yardbirds are not hybrids, they are chickens that have interbred for generations, probably hundreds of years if not more, with no one trying to create a breed out of them. They probably have some size and conformation consistency but you can get a real rainbow of colors and patterns. A typical barnyard mix that has been around for thousands of years.
Do your yardbirds go broody? I admire you building your own incubator, but maybe if you find a broody yardbird you can exchange your eggs for the ones she is hatching? Just a thought.
You do not have great stock to begin with for meat, both of your options are fairly small chickens. Do you have anyone on the island that shows dual purpose chickens? If you could get a reject cockerel from them you could inject a huge difference in size in your flock in a very few generations. But you have to work with what you have, both breeds and other restrictions.
Like the others my suggestion is to eat the ones you don’t want to eat and breed the ones you would like to eat as well as you can for better meat production. Since you can only get females of those hybrid layers that may mean you keep breeding to them until you get your own hens that are better than them. Your goal is not to have a huge carcass at a young age, with your stock you can’t achieve that, but I think all you are after is a better eating bird than you have now. Your plan should achieve that. With them free ranging and interbreeding as they will you face some restrictions. Eat as many of those inferior cockerels as you can. I eat my inferior hens and pullets too but it sounds like that may be a challenge for you.
For what it is worth Dad raised chickens a lot like you describe, they also had a lot of game in them. But every 5 or 6 years he’d get some dual purpose breeds to mix with them to improve the overall stock. We ate a lot of eggs and Mom could turn one of those chickens into a gourmet meal. She was a farm girl that could cook. I don’t know her tricks so I can’t come close to doing what she could, but you might look up Coq au Vin, that’s how a French chef would turn a mature rooster into a gourmet meal. Use a recipe that marinates them in wine. The older chickens are usually best in dishes like chicken ‘n dumplings, stews, or soup. They need to be cooked slowly and with moisture, never get above a slow simmer.
Good luck and have fun with the project.
