Dual purpose bird or straight meat bird?

[galanie]

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Well... What's the cost to purchase and raise breeder stock? From what I can find, getting chicks is not easy, they are very expensive (by comparison to hatchery CX), if you buy eggs you risk poor hatch rates, and in any case you are spending a bunch of money up front for a flock that won't begin to return much meat on the investment for at least a year. (Granted the hens begin to pay you back when they start laying.) If half your birds are cockerels and you put all but one or two of those in the freezer, that's some expensive meat; the conversion ratio would be more like 7:1. IF all goes well, after 18 months you'd have another crop of "free" cockerels (and maybe some culled hens and pullets), so you'd begin to earn back your investment. It would be interesting to run some realistic numbers and see how the long-term economics worked out.

Out here in California I am not aware of any breeders with meaty Delaware, NH, or Buckeye stock for sale. (I have all three in my DP flock though!) It's easy to get CX chicks, but very very difficult to find breeder stock "heritage" birds for meat.

And where I am, I'm unaware of any of those or any Orpington breeders close by. But if, like me, you have a long range plan, then waiting another year to start getting that particular breed of chicks is better than never getting any of what I want. So I found a breeder that was selling eggs, had the 50% hatch rate, and have my initial breeder stock. I'm in no rush. If I wanted to raise meaties before then, I'd order some CX from a hatchery. But that's me, I realize not everyone will want to take the same options.

As for eating your initial breeder stock extra cockerels, nope. Good stock will usually sell if the right person is looking. I sold my extra cockerels for what I thought was high for a roo and could have gotten more because they were from that breeder. Got enough to get 3 or 4 whole chickens at Kroger for each one

 

[Saltysteele]

i won't do CX's again.

we did freedom rangers this year. they had no health problems, were running, jumping and flying till the day they died. they had no troubles flying over a 4 foot fence, and were just a normal-acting chicken. so much more pleasant than a CX (which would have been dead of a heart attack by this age). they also lasted through our near-100-degree near-80% humidity weather this summer with no problems. we started with 20 and ended with 20.

we just finished ours today, they were 17 weeks or so (did the first half at 12 weeks, but couldn't get to the second half sooner due to scheduling issues and heat), and they were over 7 pounds dressed out. plump, full carcasses. looked like smaller turkeys

i had a couple black australorp and cochin roosters that were a month older, and they looked like skinny little runts compared to these FR hens. if you're looking for meat chickens, i HIGHLY suggest freedom rangers.

we fed feed roughly 17% protein corn-based feed (hog feed- ground corn, soybean meal protein, and enzymes). they also ate some hay

 

[Flyboy718]

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I'm raising the Red Broilers now. Should be processing one or two this weekend and probably the rest in a couple more weeks. I'm pleased with them so far and will let everyone know how they taste!

If all goes well - I'll be ordering a larger batch for the fall.

How much feed have they eaten per bird? How long did it take them to get to butcher weight?

 

[Neil Grassbaugh]

Post #17 under

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=7127976#p7127976

is also responsive to some of this thread.

 

[homesteadapps]

Neil
In your referenced post

"Over five years’ time these are the average results; the livability was 94.4% (2.360 birds lost [ALL causes] per 25 placed), the average weight at slaughter was 5.65 lbs. (as hatched), the average feed conversion was 1.81lbs of feed per pound of live weight. Correction. During the five year time period one entire flock was lost due to weather and is not counted in these average results. (That was a mess, they were all 3.5 weeks old)."

I agree with a lot of what you were saying but had a question on your feed conversion.

If I'm figuring correctly your 1.81 lbs of feed per pound works out to only feeding the chickens 10.22 lbs of feed.
Is this correct? Is this at 6 weeks because we use the 23 hours of light 7 days a week and use 10 lbs give or take in 6 weeks and have been closer to 20 lbs at 8 weeks.


I figure our feed to meat/carcass weight instead of live weight which is not the way most people do, but I like to calculate this way because it gives me a number of feed and cost to put the final weight on the table. Calculating either should give similar results, but your numbers looked too good to me and was trying to see if we could do something better.

 

[Neil Grassbaugh]

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[AlbionWood]

Thanks Mitch, I will follow up on these.

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[homesteadapps]

Neil,

We raise the majority of ours for our own use, not to sell so that is why I figure the feed ratio the way I do. I already knew this wasn't the normal way of calculating this. I'm sure the ratios would be close to yours if I used live weight but I do it the other way since the majority of offal isn't usable by me. Since I compare both the DP and the meat the same way then the difference should be similar if figured by live verses carcass weight.

I'm sure in the quantity that you are raising you are selling live birds to be slaughtered so it make more sense in the industry to do it this way since you are selling the whole thing. I have both the live and carcass weight recorded but we calculate ours this way to know how much it costs to get a pound of table meat. This makes more sense to us even if it isn't the standard. For instance it take about 18lbs of feed to put that 6 pound bird on our table.

I see a lot of charts that say 16 pounds, and others that say 20. On a large scale operation I'm sure you have a feeding system in place to limit waste too. For a normal homesteader or backyard farmer our equipment is not going to be as efficient and that our feed usage is naturally going to be higher due to waste.

23/7 is not hard on the birds and is still recommended by some hatcheries and even other farmers I know. I guess it depends on what product you are trying to get. It gives us a beautiful roaster at 8 weeks. We usually raise about 50 at a time and have only lost between 1 & 3 birds each time and these were usually culled so it wasn't actually wasted. Live weight is usually around 7.5 to 8.25 pounds and these dress out in the 5.5 to 6 pound range which are really nice birds for a family dinner.

Basing my number on the standard I'd have to say our CX at 8 week are 2.5 lb feed to 1 lb of live weight.

Thanks for clarifying your numbers because I was wondering how you were able to get such good looking numbers.

I think the biggest difference is that it takes a lot more feed to put on those last 2 or 3 pounds then it does the first 4 or 5. This make sense. Efficiently feeding rabbits to 8 to 12 week fryers give much better feed conversions than growing them out to roasters too.

 

[Neil Grassbaugh]

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I read, often times with horror for the birds, the practices and results of backyard producers. If we could scrap the folklore, "common sense" and totally outdated information offered on the internet and just adapt the current best practices and scientific information available from the industry the backyard birds would thrive and the human inputs would be better rewarded.

 

[homesteadapps]

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I believe if even small backyard farmers keep records and review performance then they will find that some of the old timers advice isn't all true. We've made our software affordable so anyone who wants to use it can. We even give away for free, forms to help keep manual records so that people can keep track of how things are going. If you skimp on the diet then you will pay in performance or on larger animals health problems and I agree that for production birds diet is essential whether it is eggs or meat.

For most backyard flocks some of the old time methods work --free ranging for instance, scraps, etc... but I do not believe on forcing any animal for fend for itself.

I want healthy animals and as long as they get some form of good nutrition offered to them to balance out the diet even free ranging chickens should do well. We buy feed on occasion from TSC but mainly our feed is either purchased from a mill or ground here at our small farm. Our DP flock is offered feed but during the warm months they eat very little because they free range. I get very good results with our Breeder WR Stock and have been working with them to improve the strain for us. I want, like many on here something that is self sustaining. I use the meat birds to get the freezer full. This past year we have only raised 25 and next year if everything goes as planned the only hybrids we will be raising will be for the boys 4H fair project.

Our plan has evolved over time, by adding ducks and rabbits but between the ducks and rabbits and goats there is an endless supply of food available and now we are focusing on developing our WR into even better meat birds. We are now starting to get enough extras to help the animals pay for their own feed.

I have nothing against the Hybrids other then you have to purchase them every year, but if the freezer starts getting empty you better believe some Cornish will find their way here.