Finishing heritage meat chickens

[Niki1313]

I am doing an experiment with a few heritage chicks I bought. They are from a hatchery, so i know that they will be on the small end. I am planning on caponizing them at some point this week. I have a time until I need to worry about finishing them. I was wondering what some of you do to finish bringing the weight up before slaughter. I seen a post somewhere about caging and feeding corn and raw milk, currently I am feeding them starter/ grower 20% protein. They are all between ages of 3-5 weeks old. Breeds are wyandotte, delaware, and a few sex links. My end goal is to hatch our own eggs for meat in the next few years. Right now just experimenting with different flavors/breeds. Any other suggestions or advise would be appreciated.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Do you have caponizing experience?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Good news. All of those are early maturing to very early maturing birds.

Bad news. None of those birds get huge. The Sex Links were likely selected for prodigious laying, and large eggs relative to body size, but they tend to stay small. The Delawares and Wyandotte have decent laying and good size eggs (tending towards the light shell color end of the scale too, which makes candling easier), but are only moderate size.

You will have a lot of selective breeding ahead of you to make those meat birds, and will end up culling a lot of males along the way at limited yield/bird. But at least with early maturing birds, you can do so quickly - a sexually mature generation in 4-5 months is much faster to advance a breed project with than a sexually mature generation every 6-7 months. You won't get the breast/thigh ratio of a CornishX, ever. If you like dark meat, that's just fine.

Cross your fingers and hope you win the genetic lottery with a Delaware over one of your Sex-links, throwing a large body cross, then use that bird as the basis for the next generation. Or bring in a Roo who has huge body size and doesn't set your other goals back too far - a large Orp or Plymouth Rock, for instance.

Most people abandon breed projects after a very short while.

I have one of my own, in the early stages, and my initial record keeping has already fallen by the way side. To do it seriously is a part time job. Real life rarely cooperates. But if you are interested, "Making Lemonade".

/edit and not having time to keep good records, I definitely don't have time to caponize. I process unwanted males as soon as they start showing interest in the hens, so usually 16-20 week range. Current focus is size and pattern (both), which sometimes means I keep the second largest bird for the next generation. If I had more laser focus, I might show better progress, but I'm asking a lot of my end goal.

 

[Niki1313]

Do you have caponizing experience?

I have a friend who is going to be teaching me

 

[Niki1313]

Good news. All of those are early maturing to very early maturing birds.

Bad news. None of those birds get huge. The Sex Links were likely selected for prodigious laying, and large eggs relative to body size, but they tend to stay small. The Delawares and Wyandotte have decent laying and good size eggs (tending towards the light shell color end of the scale too, which makes candling easier), but are only moderate size.

You will have a lot of selective breeding ahead of you to make those meat birds, and will end up culling a lot of males along the way at limited yield/bird. But at least with early maturing birds, you can do so quickly - a sexually mature generation in 4-5 months is much faster to advance a breed project with than a sexually mature generation every 6-7 months. You won't get the breast/thigh ratio of a CornishX, ever. If you like dark meat, that's just fine.

Cross your fingers and hope you win the genetic lottery with a Delaware over one of your Sex-links, throwing a large body cross, then use that bird as the basis for the next generation. Or bring in a Roo who has huge body size and doesn't set your other goals back too far - a large Orp or Plymouth Rock, for instance.

Most people abandon breed projects after a very short while.

I have one of my own, in the early stages, and my initial record keeping has already fallen by the way side. To do it seriously is a part time job. Real life rarely cooperates. But if you are interested, "Making Lemonade".

/edit and not having time to keep good records, I definitely don't have time to caponize. I process unwanted males as soon as they start showing interest in the hens, so usually 16-20 week range. Current focus is size and pattern (both), which sometimes means I keep the second largest bird for the next generation. If I had more laser focus, I might show better progress, but I'm asking a lot of my end goal.

I'm a stay at home mom looking for a long term project. As far as smaller breast, our family prefers dark meat. I know I will never get anywhere near a cornish x, I am not looking for a huge bird, also how fast they grow isn't a big concern either. I guess I'm just looking for well flavored barnyard mix. I did pick up a couple orpingtons, hoping they will be good broodies. I think there might be a roo hiding among them, but too soon to tell. As far as taking 6+ months, as long as they taste good, no worries.

 

[iwltfum]

As far as taking 6+ months, as long as they taste good, no worries

From my experience, all the heritage breeds taste pretty much the same. I would keep track of your costs for feed just out of curiosity. You might be willing to wait 6+ months, but would you do it again if each chicken ends up consuming $25+ in feed. Maybe it doesn't matter, but something to consider.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I do not caponize or finish mine so I can't help you with that. We all have out own goals, wants, desires, and personal preferences. We do all kinds of different things for all kinds of reasons. Size, early maturity, costs, body conformation, feather color, age at butcher, or many other things will be highly important to some people while others may not worry about that at all. So when you are reading through here try to see if any of this actually applies to you. Not just the what but the why.

You asked for suggestions. My first is to read a lot of posts on this meat section of the forum, even some that you think might not apply to you. You never know where you will pick up a nugget.

You cannot reach your goals if you don't know what they are. You seem to have a handle on that. But be flexible. As you gain experience there is a huge possibility your goals will change or at least be tweaked. Your methods may change dramatically.

My end goal is to hatch our own eggs for meat in the next few years. Right now just experimenting with different flavors/breeds.

Excellent way to approach it. Trust yourself. Go by what you see instead of blindly doing what anyone on here says to do. That goes for breeds, housing, feeding, butchering, cooking, and about anything else. We'll try to give good suggestions but those will be flavored by our personal preferences. What works for me may very well not work for you. Some people want a purebred flock for very legitimate reasons. I'm extremely happy with a mixed breed mutt flock. we are all different.

If you have specific questions questions or general questions never hesitate to ask. This is a pretty friendly group here, some with a lot of experience. Others are just starting out. Questions can help anyone, not just you.

Welcome to the journey, it can be a fun road.

 

[Mosey2003]

Commercial black sexlink males get to be quite a decent size in my experience.

If you're wanting to breed your own plus have good layers, I would go that route, honestly. Find someone breeding good, standard-bred Barred Rocks for your hens and a good New Hampshire for a male and you're set for a few years. If you really want to make it long term, you'd want to also breed some of the Rocks and NH as pure lines, so that you'll have refreshed birds for your sexlink breeding. If you get the stock from a breeder focusing on carcass quality, both Barred Rocks and NH, especially the NH, are quite decent table birds themselves.

That's what I would do, anyway.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Commercial black sexlink males get to be quite a decent size in my experience.

How quickly, if you don't mind answering? I've had to judge from my Golden Comets, a red sex link, and of course I only had hens. They hit 3.5# and started laying pretty fast (17 weeks +/- would need to check the calendar) then gradually drifted up to 4.5#, and at age 1 year, most are at 5# +/- a few ounces, which I understood to be typical. Have you found black sex links to be substantially larger and/or faster growing? Obviously, the males would weigh more - a pound or so, I keeping that in mind.

(and I'm using my Sex links as part of my breed project, though given the choice of birds, I'd have rather started with the parent stock - COVID and last year's farm store birds, you bought what they had w/i minutes of arrival, or you didn't buy).

 

[Mosey2003]

How quickly, if you don't mind answering? I've had to judge from my Golden Comets, a red sex link, and of course I only had hens. They hit 3.5# and started laying pretty fast (17 weeks +/- would need to check the calendar) then gradually drifted up to 4.5#, and at age 1 year, most are at 5# +/- a few ounces, which I understood to be typical. Have you found black sex links to be substantially larger and/or faster growing? Obviously, the males would weigh more - a pound or so, I keeping that in mind.

(and I'm using my Sex links as part of my breed project, though given the choice of birds, I'd have rather started with the parent stock - COVID and last year's farm store birds, you bought what they had w/i minutes of arrival, or you didn't buy).

I didn't raise a whole batch of them myself, but I've picked up a few to butcher basically as a favor for folks that don't want males. One was 5 months old and dressed out at something like 6lbs.

Knowing the crosses involved in the different sexlinks, if I were wanting meaty birds I would go with the blacks over any of the others, the reds are smaller birds. I have three ISA Brown hens with my standard-bred Barred Rock flock and they're *considerably* smaller and lighter. I know the black sexlinks sold in stores are Barred Rock hens with either a RIR or NH male, which is why they tend to be a bit heftier I'm sure. My Rock hens are over 7lbs at maturity, I can only imagine what I'd get for sexlinks if I used a really good line NH male. Someday I probably will, but I'm still working on getting these closer to where I'd like them.