Dual purpose birds for meat

[kesrchicky16]

Next spring I plan on not fighting broody hens. So I will have some little chicks running around being extra bodies that I won't want overwintering.

I have read that meat birds are often slaughtered at 8 weeks. I have "why not" chick that hatched this year about 7 weeks now. It just seems really tiny. Is that because being dual purpose or just the specific genetics or at they really tiny and that is just the balance of feed cost vs bird size?

This particular bird is destined to grow up. If She my aunt will add her to her flock. If He I'm not certain yet. Maybe locked up in a breeding pen. Parentage is Mama = EE Papa = Silver Laced Wyandotte cross.

Also feeding questions about Table birds. My flock of 24 mature birds ate 1/4 of the food they do now during the summer. I cut back feed and bought higher protein % as they left more and more in the dishes because of free range foraging. And increased until they have few leftovers again. If I want good size meat birds can I let feed they that way too?

 

[chickendreams24]

It all depends on what you plan to have for "meat" birds.

We grow out all of our spare heritage breed cockerals (and heritage cross cockerals) for the table they take longer than Cornish cross meat birds.

Cornish cross meat birds are the typical bird you would buy as chicken in the store. They grow in 6-8 weeks but their feed has to be closely monitored or they can very easily eat themselves to death. They also can develop leg and heart problems due to their fast weight gain. They can become sedentary but develop much more breast meat. They have the best feed conversion ratio but develop less flavor. Once you try well cooked home grown chicken especially heritage birds store chicken will seem rather bland. Not bad but I do notice a difference.

There are also red broilers that grow in about 10-14 weeks. They grow slower than Cornish cross so they have longer lives, tend to have fewer problems, develop more flavor but also maintain some good feed conversion numbers.

Heritage breeds take longer. Often 14-16 weeks or more. A lot of it depends on the stock you have. Someone who has heritage bred lines versus someone who bought hatchery stock... Often in my opinion not always but often they are like two different breeds. If you can raise chicks and free range them in the spring/summer is best for raising cockerals. They can forage for some of their own feed save you some money and they will produce healthier meat than purely grain fed animals.

Some people think heritage meat is tough especially free range. It's all in how you cook it. Low and slow. Yum.

With crossing two heritage breeds, hatchery stock or not you can sometimes get some hybrid vigor which can increase the bird size or breed for color sexable chicks at hatch etc. However raising threatened breeds can be wonderful too and you can continually breed for size among other things.

Red broilers and Cornish cross do not breed true. Some people have managed to keep one or two alive to try and breed their own meat birds but it isn't easy.

Breeds that are autosexing are wonderful dual purpose animals to keep as well.

Message me if you want to talk more about this topic. It was really hard for us(me especially) at first but we won't go back. Knowing what the bird ate and how it was treated and lived and even how it died is such a blessing. We do care about all of our cockerals they get love and attention if they get an injury they get care and treatment just like any of our other birds would.

 

[cavemanrich]

You have to understand the difference between egg layers, dual purpose, and meat birds. Three distinct categories and differences.
Egg layers ..... are just that. They will lay lots of eggs, like 300 per year in their first 2 years of laying. Not much meat to them, and as a economical benefit, Egg ratio to Feed is FAVORABLE.
Dual purpose is just that. They will lay a fair amount of eggs and do develop good size bodies. They mature in about same amount of time as layers. 5 to 6 months and even longer. After they decline in egg production , they are processed.
Meat birds, also called broilers are EATING MACHINES.. They mature at 8 weeks or longer if rationed feed. Will not live beyond 1 year old. (yes, I know there are exceptions and exercise programs peeps tried to extend that) At 1 year old, they develop heart conditions and start breaking bones. These birds are the most ideal feed to meat ratio available.
If you start to raise more chickens in spring, let all grow out. Start to eat the 50% rosters that hatch first. Start when they become troublesome. Then figure out how you want to rotate your stock of hens. This option of raising chickens is not as cost efficient as compared to raising broilers. You need to feed a chicken for 6 months instead of 2.
WISHING YOU BEST....

 

[kesrchicky16]

I have tried eating dual purpose birds in my quest for a good suburban meat bird and gave up and have focussed all my attention on learning how to grow health, happy and very tasty Cornish Cross. I hear people complain about how CX are bland but that has not been my experience, I grow them out on good organic feed and then add yummy herbs, spices and lemon and I have had people tell me that the birds I serve up are the best they have ever had. I'm not trying to brag, I just am not sure what people expect when they eat a chicken and say it's not flavorful, if this is what they are talking about. It would be great if CX bread true and there were a way to get the eggs to place under a broody.
It's a bit of a moot point though, I can't have roosters here so I have to mail order my chicks anyway. I have 36 CX coming along right now, my best batch yet. conversion rate, final weight and time to slaughter are all important things to me given the constraints I have here and the four hungry members of my family to feed. I think CX get a bad rap, most of the bad stories come from strains that are over bread and people expecting too much from them without taking careful care of them. moderate the feed, use nipple waterers for water to keep the microbes down, keep them moving and wow, they are wonderful to work with, IMHO. I've found the COBB 500 strain to be the best for back yard production.

I got duel purpose because they supposedly do better over winter. I got them for eggs. Got roos for added protection and preditor alarms. Got tired of fighting broody chickens and so I needed to know what to do with chicks especially the 50%ish cockerels. I'm just glad I have months to psych myself up for slaughter. Not sure how I feel about that yet. And yes I eat store bought chicken but I never saw that ones eyes. Harder for me personally to eat something I heard talk and watched eat. I'll get over it. Especially if it means not wasting.
I believe animals are happiest when they are fully utilized for the purpose if their creation.

 

[Ridgerunner]

At 7 weeks we may be able to help you with sexing that chick if you post photos. A shot of the head showing comb and wattles and another shot of the body showing legs, posture, and conformation both help. Some are harder than others but seven weeks could be old enough.

I don't know what you are comparing the size of that chick to when you say it's tiny. How you feed them has some effect on size, males are typically larger than females, and of course genetics. Both mother and father contribute to those genetics but there are a lot of different genes that affect size and growth rate. How those genes go together in that individual can vary a lot for even full siblings. I want to emphasize that, full siblings can vary a lot on size and growth rate, even for purebred birds.

There can be a lot of difference in the average size of different flocks of the same breed too. If the person selecting which chickens get to breed selects the breeders for larger size you will soon wind up with a flock that average more in size than a flock where they may emphasize egg production more, for example. Different hatcheries have different people selecting which chickens go in the breeding pen but in general hatcheries do not emphasize size.

The others have already covered this but I'll go through it. Different people butcher dual purpose chickens at different ages. I eat pullets as well as cockerels but since you are talking about cockerels lets stay there.

Different things influence when you may want to butcher. Some live where a cockerel crowing could be a big problem so they butcher quite young. How you want to cook the bird can have a big influence. The older the bird the more flavor and texture it has and the slower and moister you need to cook it. Different people have different tolerances so I won't give you specific ages but in general you need to butcher pretty young if you want to fry or grill it. Some people need that to be by 12 weeks, others are quite happy at 16 weeks. If you are used to the store chickens it will probably be younger rather than older. If you want to roast it you can go longer. There are techniques to cook really old birds and still make a great meal. There may be some trial and error involved for you to find your sweet spot.

A 12 week old dual purpose cockerel will have almost no meat on it, pretty much all bones. They will continue to grow pretty fast for a couple of months but somewhere around 5 months of age they hit a plateau and the rate of growth really slows down. But by then you cannot fry or grill them.

If your birds forage for a lot of their food their growth rate will be slower than if you feed them a fairly high protein feed and that feed is all they eat. Since yours can forage for a lot of what they eat it is more cost effective for you to grow them to a larger size than for others. But that means you need to hatch them in a certain window to take advantage of that. I love my broody hens and have them hatch chicks every year but I also use an incubator pretty early to get some chicks started to take advantage of that. We are all unique in our goals and conditions. You might need some trial and error to find your sweet spot in this. I raise mine for meat even more than the eggs while you seem to be just wanting to take advantage of broody hens. Different goals.

On here a lot of people really get hung up on the size of the cockerel, bigger becoming an obsession. How much meat do you really need from one bird? There are only two of us and I can get two meals from a pullet by making the second meal chicken soup with leftovers from the first meal. A large cockerel just means I get chicken for lunch a day or two. I do try to breed for larger cockerels but it's not as important to me as other things. I normally like to butcher cockerels around five months so I'm not that interested in early maturing as some people that like to butcher earlier. Any chicken can be eaten at any size but there are a lot of variables that go into it for each of us.

One last thing, how long are you planning on keeping your hens? Their egg production normally drops off after three or four years but they can live for several more. Are you willing to house and feed them and get very few if any eggs? While the sex ratio of each hatch can be widely varied, I often get 2/3 or more of the same sex in an individual hatch, over a span of time you will average around 50-50 male-female. Your number of females can grow pretty fast, you need a plan for all of them, not just the cockerels.

Good luck with it.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

The younger the bird the more tender it will be. This also equates to flavor- the older the bird the more flavor it has. A cockerel grown out to six months for roasting has excellent flavor. If you like duck you'll enjoy older roasted cockerels. It's a good idea to limit the number you grow out to roasting age as it's a lot more feed to get them there. The younger the bird the higher heat you can use to cook it. 14-15 weeks is your cut off for grilling or broiling. The 12 to 14 week mark is also your best feed conversion for dual purpose birds. They're going to be small at that age, a good bird will dress out to 3 lbs at 14 weeks but most will be less and at 12 weeks some will be closer to 2 lbs dressed. The only difference is you'd grill halves instead of quarters. There is no advantage to grow out a small bird, it's better to butcher the runty ones early. The smaller and lankier birds are not potential breeders and throwing feed at them for more months will not gain much more meat. If you read many threads on dual purpose birds for meat you'll see 6-7 month dress weights at 3.5 lbs. It begs the question why that bird wasn't butchered three months earlier for 2.5 lbs carcass.

To recap; the age of bird is the highest heat it can be cooked at. Broilers to 15 weeks, fryers to 20 weeks and roasters to 9 months- year of age. You can roast a broiler but will regret trying to broil a roaster. It doesn't take much feed to grow out chicks but come 8-10 weeks of age dual purpose will be taking in .2-.25 lbs of feed per day each. Depending on available forage that's .25-.33 lbs per day as teenagers. A lot of variables but say it's about $7 more in feed per bird to grow out from broiler to roasting age. Combine that with infighting of older cockerels and harassment of pullets when sexually mature it makes sense to cull most of your K's at broiler age. Besides, who doesn't like a BBQ for 4th of July?

 

[triplepurpose]

You should check out this article:
https://livestockconservancy.org/images/uploads/docs/cookingwheritagechicken.pdf

It basically corroborates what others have explained so well on here but also lays the historical context out very clearly which I think really helps.

We slaughter most of our dominique cockerels by around 3 months and split them in half with poultry shears (quick and easier to clean that way, and ready for marinade and bbq). backbones, feet, organs etc can be saved too for stock and other uses. This is traditional broiler age, and I think it makes sense with flocks that are primarily focused on eggs, because it allows you to cull all but a few potential breeders before they are old enough to start crowing, require more space, and generally become a handful: crow, spar, chase the hens, and really start to wolf the feed. but they are still big enough where one of the halves, grilled, makes for a single satisfying serving with sides. By producing mainly broilers (heritage broilers, not to be confused with modern hybrid broilers) we still get some nice dinners but we save on feed and don't need extensive separate housing or to put in a lot of extra effort beyond what is required already in raising replacement pullets.

At least, thats what we lean toward nowadays.

I also think size, in and of itself, is totally overrated. A meal is a meal, and it's still enjoyable regardless of the weight of the amount of meat incorporated into it. I'm more interested in quality and flavor than in volume and find that much more relevant. Whether I eat a quarter pound of chicken with a half pound of mashed potatoes or a eighth of a pound of meat with 5/8 of a pound of mashed potatoes isn't really what makes a huge difference to us--but raising and buying feed for 8 or 10 rowdy hungry cockerels for an extra month or two really does make an impact on our lives.

BTW I have to say, it also bugs me too when people obsess over the finished weight of a bird but then throw out the organs, necks, and feet--here they are so keen on feed to meat conversion and growth rates, but they are throwing away a significant portion of the bird's total food value potential! (I understand if they are concerned with profit margins on marketable product, of course, thats different). Heck, some people even use the intestines and heads too, in places where people really can't afford to waste food...

Good luck!

 

[barn206]

I am so thinking of chicken liver pate right now... I can only imagine how great it would taste from fresh chicken... yum!

 

[Maeschak]

I got duel purpose because they supposedly do better over winter. I got them for eggs. Got roos for added protection and preditor alarms. Got tired of fighting broody chickens and so I needed to know what to do with chicks especially the 50%ish cockerels. I'm just glad I have months to psych myself up for slaughter. Not sure how I feel about that yet. And yes I eat store bought chicken but I never saw that ones eyes. Harder for me personally to eat something I heard talk and watched eat. I'll get over it. Especially if it means not wasting.
I believe animals are happiest when they are fully utilized for the purpose if their creation.

It will be much easier for you to butcher once those little guys turn into serious jerks... Challenging you, chasing the hens, fighting between themselves, and of course cock-a-doodling at all hours! Soon you will look forward to their demise and fantasize about chicken enchiladas!

 

[chickendreams24]

Okay as far as the killing part of processing after much research we decided on the killing cone method for several reasons.

I will first admit that I'm blessed in that my DH2B does the actual killing for me we work together on all the rest of the tasks. I am working up to being able to do it but I like others here don't want to hesitate or botch it and cause the bird to suffer.

It can be done into a bucket meaning less mess. The bird does not run or flop around except for a little in the end death throes. It's more humane as the bird is naturally calmer in and upside down position. Also you can with skill cut the arteries on both sides of the neck bleeding them twice as fast. I've also heard that if botched you can thrust the knife up through the soft pallet in their mouths to go into the brain and kill them. We've never had to do this.

We attended Mother Earth News Fair last year in the midst of our research and met a woman by the name of Meredith Leigh. She used to be a butcher and was a wealth of knowledge she gave a talk on ethical meat(which she has a book of the same name). I will mention that she said there that chickens were her least favorite animal when she raised her own meat. However she was raising Cornish cross and fully admitted that could have been the problem.


Anyway she explained to us that what makes the meat go bad and/or bruise is blood. So the killing cone gives you better meat bc the blood drains more fully via the heart pumping and gravity.
Also bc the bird is relaxed and particularly if your birds are familiar and relaxed with you the meat is also better because they're relaxed. There's no fear or tenseness.

We walk around with each bird until we feel him relax before processing him.

So to sum up so far
A relaxed bird gives better more tender meat just like an animal that gets hit by a car proteins are released that tenses the muscles and generally makes the meat unsuitable for consumption, tough and stringy. Of course there are people who eat animals they hit. I'm not judging anyone here.

Second a bird that is bled more fully will have better tasting meat and be more tender and less likely to bruise if run through a plucker. It usually will also take longer to go bad. We have had birds in the fridge 8 days before we got around to cooking them and they still smelled fresh no smell at all.

Third if you aren't processing every bird you have and they see the process or see birds running around without a head this can and usually will traumatize them.

Fourth it's clean and I've seen a set up where multiple cones drained into a folded piece of tin that was then angled dumping all the blood into a bucket. Occasionally a bird will flop out during the worst of the death throes but we've only had one do that bc we walked away. Again it's only happened one time.

You do need to make sure you have a cone of the appropriate size for the birds you are doing.

I will post more in this topic later as I think of it.