Favourite Meat Bird

[Newchickadee30]

Hello,
Besides the Cornish what are some other good meat birds?
We are looking to get some and although duel purpose chickens are nice, I hear lots of people say duels don’t normally taste as good.
I am trying to find something we could get in the spring pretty quick here and butcher in September/October.
Thank you

 

[RoosterML]

I really enjoy the Red Royal Broilers from Moyers. I am pretty sure a lot of the red Broilers are similar. I keep them about 9 weeks and they end up in the 5.5lbs range dressed out. Very juicy/fatty making the meat nice and moist no matter how you cook it. Last year I did 2 different batches.

 

[mandelyn]

When we first went dual purpose I didn't know at that time that chickens need to be bred for their table qualities. Our first year we had 17 extra Easter Egger cockerels and they were terrible.

Then we had Marans, and those were actually pretty good. Got some more Marans but they weren't the same as the first Marans, differences in body type and fullness. So we scrapped the 2nd line and kept breeding from the first ones.

We tried some others, pretty much using the spare cockerels to find out if it was a variety we were going to stick with. The usual complaints of "Too slow to grow", such as Niederrheiners and some other big types. They grew their skeleton first, leggy and tall at 5 months, the fullness didn't come until much later.

While going through the other varieties, I still had the Marans and as I hatched and grew them, I looked for the the faster growing birds, the boys who got chunkier first, looking for compact but wide body structures. They just kept getting better!

Then we got Bresse, and they blew those Marans out of the water. The Bresse are heavier in the breast, thin/delicate skin, mild dark meat and fat that melts like butter. The meat is more tender too, shorter fibers. The Marans, in contrast, have a thicker yellow skin, rich dark meat, heavier in the thigh than the breast. The Bresse start laying at about 20 weeks, the Marans usually at 24-28 weeks.

A friend gifted me a start in Silver Double Laced Barnevelders last summer. I got them on condition that I hatch 3 pullets for her. I had been drooling over that variety for a LONG time. Turned out to be 7 boys and 2 girls, so we had 6 to sample for the table.

They were terrible. They lack pelvic width and it was difficult to get my hand in there for processing. A slow grower, not much meat at 24 weeks. Strongly fibered meat... borderline stringy. Not a good dinner bird. So disappointed! I'll hatch her 3 pullets and then part with the pair I kept, as pretty as they are I need dual purpose qualities.

This year I'm messing around with hybridizing the Bresse and using some project birds I've come up with in the venture... looking for the traits we like to see from table birds. With an eye on body structure, width, depth, fullness and growth rate. You can breed a bird for it's feathers and eggs or you can breed a bird for it's carcass, or look at both and call it dual purpose.

We could go the "instant gratification" route and pick up a box of 25 Cornish Cross chicks from Mt Healthy hatchery and do that 3 times a year, but what's the fun in that? I'd rather torture myself with learning about the breeding.

Dual purpose varieties that were bred towards feathers and eggs aren't going to have the same results as a different bloodline within that breed that had been bred towards table qualities too.