You do have a lot of options but you are also putting some limitations that makes it harder to come up with a recommendation.
You can eat any chicken, regardless of age or sex. The trick is knowing how to cook it and that depends on age and sex.
The laying chickens are basically leghorns or commercial hybrids bred specifically for laying. These chickens are fairly small so there is not much meat, they have been bred to lay a lot of fairly large eggs, and they have a real good feed to egg conversion ratio. A lot of the sex links sold by hatcheries are these commercial hybrids. Not all, but a lot.
The meat birds are basically the Cornish Cross, also called Cornish X or broilers. Freedom Rangers also fall into that category. The Cornish Cross are bred to be harvested at 6 to 8 weeks. You have to have pretty rigid feeding schemes to keep them past that age because the eat so much and grow so fast their body breaks down and they die. Freedom Rangers don't grow as fast but you still have to watch what they eat or they can also eat themselves to death.
What a lot of us do is use the dual purpose breeds. It really does not matter which one. Many of us have a personal preference but that is just personal preference. They will all work. These chickens lay pretty well but don't have as good a feed to egg conversion as the Leghorn or commercial birds. They grow to a decent size for butchering but don’t grow as fast as the broilers and don’t have as good a feed to meat conversion rate. Some of the hatchery sex links are just dual purpose chickens bred from regular dual purpose chickens. A lot of people get confused about the sex links they get from hatcheries because they might be based on the commercial egg laying hybrids or they might be true dual purpose chickens.
Others have mentioned various options. I’ll probably repeat some though I’ll try not to.
You can buy dual purpose chicks from a hatchery or get them from a feed store and raise them specifically for butchering. I like to wait until they are at least 16 weeks old and prefer 18 to 20 weeks since they have better meat volume then. After 20 weeks they tend to slow down putting on meat very fast.
You can get fertile eggs of dual purpose chickens and hatch them, again specifically to butcher. There are lots of ways to get fertile eggs. You can buy them on this forum, talk to people at your feed store to see if they know someone with fertile eggs, or find your state thread in the “Where am I” Where are You?” section of this forum and discuss it there. You should find someone in your area with fertile eggs.
If you are willing to do it, you can get a dual purpose rooster and put him with your flock. That will give you fertile eggs you can hatch. You can either keep some of the pullets to add to your flock and let him butcher the roosters or just let him butcher all of them. I would not suggest this unless you have a fair amount of room. If you have put your hens into the minimum amount of space they may be too tight to really put a rooster with them.
You can get an incubator to hatch the eggs and raise them in the brooder and all that. If one of your hens goes broody (not all do and not always when you want them to) you could get fertile eggs for her to hatch and raise. When a hen goes broody you have as while to get the eggs for her to hatch but it might be beneficial to have someone local lined up where you can get fertile eggs on a few days’ notice. Again, I would not let a broody hatch and raise with the flock unless I had more than the minimum of room.
In any case, if you raise them you have to be willing to let him butcher them and one of you have to cool them. Are you capable of doing your part in that?
