Dual purpose breeds

[sandspoultry]

Quote:
I disagree on a few points here

There is a night and day difference between the taste of the chicken. We have raised cornish X - they tasted a little better than store bought but still bland. Buff Orpington- have a better taste than the X but you have to be careful if you use sauce as it will overpower the chicken. Dark Cornish- have the best taste of any "breed" of chicken we raise. The hands down best tasting birds come from our "mixed" pen- there is a little of everything in there.

Skinny??? I will asume here you have never picked up a well filled out Buff Orpington or Dark Cornish roo, they aren't skinny by any means.

Buy chicken from a grocery store??? you can have my share, nuff said there.

I guess each has their own wants and needs. If you want just meat then by all means buy your X's, and buy them and buy them every time.

Our goal is to have the birds and have them contribute to the feed bill. We sell eating eggs, hatching eggs, chicks, laying hens, eating roo's. They are all self reproducing so there is a never ending supply and so far this year we are in the "black".

Steve in NC

 

[SandraMort]

I'm wondering how to figure out how much I need to breed/sell to have the flock self-supporting. Any idea? I'll have 7 EE, plus 15 or so buckeye pullets and one roo. I also have a half dozen lh, but those are just for eggs. I assume I can do this by collecting all the white eggs and occasionally permitting brown and blue to go under a broody? (Or silky or incubator, down the line)

 

[dangerouschicken]

We like our Cuckoo Marans for rooster meat. They are deliciously moist by 14 weeks. We may do some Freedom Rangers in Spring. I hear only good things about them. I will not do Cornish Cross again. Here is why:

http://lifeforcevibrations.blogspot.com/2008/06/cornish-crosses-never-again.html

 

[MamaDragon]

Dual Purpose: Able to provide eggs from the hens, as well as DECENT (Not necessarily Prime quality) meat from harvested birds.

I'm not meaning a laying flock and a meat flock at the same location, but one group of chickens doing double duty.

I'm talking about a Self-perpetuating, multi-generational, decent table meat, decent egg layers, true Old-Fashioned Farmyard flock.
If you've got too many roosters, you butcher the excess... If you have too many hens, or hens that aren't producing the way you expect... you butcher..... If you got company coming, and nothing in the freezer, you go grab a chicken, quickly butcher one out, and plan accordingly.

I'm talking Out on the Frontier, Before the Civil War... type of farmyard flock. One group of chickens does it all!

kathy

 

[dangerouschicken]

Orps, Barred Rock, Dominiques, Speckled Sussex, EEs, Cuckoo Marans.... All tasty and all produce the eggs you'd love to eat. They work. We do it.

 

[silkiechicken]

One other thing about dual purpose. The "dual" of 50-60 years ago was probably bigger than the "dual" of today. With the age of the cornish x, most "dual" birds were bred for production rather than meat.

Plus on flavor, eat your dual purpose bird at 8 weeks old. It doesn't taste much different than another 8 week old bird.

Suppose I'm a broken record here too. LOL

 

[MamaDragon]

Quote:
I've got a picture from when my Dad was a toddler, so late 1920's - that shows the hens as tall as he was, and the rooster's head was above the knee of a 6'4" man. So, I'd have to agree with Silkiechicken.

That's one of the reasons I'm undertaking the breeding project I have - to combine several of the "dual purpose" Heritage breeds. All considered to be excellent "Table Birds" of the past.

I'll select for size, confirmation, and speed of maturity. Yes, they'll officially be Mutts, and if they end up with Hybrid vigor in the process, then even better. It will take at least 12 years with two years for each step / cross to stabilize out, and select for best qualities, but I think it will be worth it.

 

[dancingbear]

MamaDragon, I absolutely agree. All due respect to Greyfields and others like him, they're producing high quality birds for commercial sale, and doing a good job of it, but seem to have a blind spot about sustainability. Cropping meat birds for sale isn't always the goal, and isn't always the best model for a homestead.

I don't want to tied to hatchery birds forever, every time I want meat birds , having to buy chicks from somebody. I want a decent meat bird that I can sustainably breed. If this becomes a growing trend, there will be people to trade birds with from time to time to get new blood into the flock.


Meanwhile, my dual-purpose, free-ranging, good-at-foraging birds are not less economical to raise to 20 weeks than 8 weeks of C X's that eat you out of house and home. When I butcher my extra roos, feed consumption drops a bit, but not like it does when you butcher C X's. Yes, I feed them longer, but no, they don't cost a fortune to feed, they don't eat like a broiler.

I know when my folks raised our own birds, they were great, we ate them all the time. They weren't tough. They weren't dry. They weren't skinny. They weren't broilers, either. When

 

[willheveland]

Quote:
Well Greathorse, I hope one of us came close to answering your post.I see you are fairly new to the forum and with alot of different opinons I'm sure It can be difficult choosing a place to start.
I just think we all have different tastes,ideas,and goals.
I hope you jump in and get your feet wet and see for yourself what you enjoy and what works for you.You will have gains and loses but that is just part of it.Don't get discouraged.Then come back and give us your opinon. good luck Will

 

[greyfields]

I deeply appreciate the aspect of sustainability and it's an overall goal of our farm. Here is where I sit on it:

1) It will take many years of selective breeding from your own flock to produce adequate broilers. In the end, you will be making hybrids from your best birds, just like the big hatcheries/producers have been doing for the past 50 years.

The advantages are you will be breeding from birds selected for best performance in your climte, soil conditions, weather, etc. This is the only truly sustainable way to get a coccidiossis resistant flock (or whatever diseases are the worst in your area). I have bred my own broilers, it's something I do. It's fun. It's science. Possibly the only thing more fun is making alcohol.

But regardless, you will not be using any 'breed' or 'purebred' to reach this goal. And remember, there really are no 'breeds' of chicken, anyhow, like there are livestock.

2) I would never in a 100 years sell any of my hombred broilers to my customers. I'd never see them again. They would be terrified by the site of a 'real chicken' and would just assume we were selling them old, layed-out hens. They'd tell their friends the chicken was 'weird'. My sales would plummet.

I want nothing but to sell people birds they view to be delicious and a delicacy. To be sustainable, you ultimately must be profitable. I have a hard enough time keeping people from cooking the hell out of their birds (everyone's paranoid about salmonella). I'll never get through to more than 1% or 2% that a weird looking bird, without a huge breast is in anyway a delicacy.

3) Broiler producion is ultimately not a sustainable enterprise in nearly all senses of sustainability. I'm producing my own grain for my birds and pigs, which puts me ahead of a huge number of people doing it. I'm in a miniscule minority on this.

If you are raising hens or broilers you are buying in feed which has an immense carbon footprint and all the money you are paying out is going towards diesel to truck grain to you from the Midwest. There is no way to 'spin' chicken production as a sustainable enterprise, unless you count the manure production as savings on fertilizer or save yourself inputs through that method. Even then, it doesn't balance.

Then remember, the grains are probably coming from farmlands of farmers who aren't being paid enough to replace teh topsoil and nutrient loss from growing the crop to begin with. It's contributing to decline.

4) I do not raise chickens to be sustainable. I raise them to be ethical. I worked on a broiler farm as a teenager and I find it simply disgraceful the state of the US chicken industry. Between 98 and 99% of the chicken we have eaten has come from one of these horror shows. Yet, if you asked anyone, they'd say as much as half the chicken they ate came from free range. We're in denial.

I raise very good chickens, which are raised humanely, treated with respect, aren't medicated to prop-up weak genetics and I've never felt better about my chicken consumption.