Has any tried cream legbar meat?

[chooketychook]

Hiya im hoping to breed cream legbars,I know Ill end up with alot of roo's that dont sell,I think theres no point in culling them at birth and thinking of eating excess roos (we are a family of 5) so I expect to have to cull 2 at a time for a decent meal,will this work? And what age would you cull them,we dont have space to have seperate meat birds im from the uk city and have a garden rather than acres of land,so my question is has anyone eaten "smaller birds" is it worth it? And what does gammy mean Im automatically am thinking slime >_<

 

[chooketychook]

Hiya im hoping to breed cream legbars,I know Ill end up with alot of roo's that dont sell,I think theres no point in culling them at birth and thinking of eating excess roos (we are a family of 5) so I expect to have to cull 2 at a time for a decent meal,will this work? And what age would you cull them,we dont have space to have seperate meat birds im from the uk city and have a garden rather than acres of land,so my question is has anyone eaten "smaller birds" is it worth it? And what does gammy mean Im automatically am thinking slime >_<

 

[oldrooster]

?????????

 

[Manningjw]

I haven't but I bet they taste like chicken! I imagine they are similar carcass to white and brown leghorns as they were originally bred for egg production?

 

[chooketychook]

Hi I guessed it would taste like chicken lol,I was thinking more about how much meat is on the bird and are they worth raising for meat birds when we have excess cockerals

 

[Manningjw]

When you can identify them at hatch as being males I imagine you are better off giving them away or trying to sell them while you still can. That said there are a few people who raise and process white leghorn boys so it might be worthwhile to you if you supplement their feed or let them free range to reduce cost to raise them?

I have seen people still trying to sell the legbar boys for a fair amount, not sure if they are successful or not.

How many eggs/year to you guess you are getting per Cream Legbar? I've seen others estimate between 150-180/year.

 

[chooketychook]

Thanks for the reply,I think I may go down that route of selling the boys and eat any im unable to sell,im not sure how many eggs per year they produce as im just starting out but ive heard they are fantastic blue egg layers x

 

[GaryDean26]

I have been eating Cream Legbar cockerel all month. I breed them for the lovely Blue eggs but in every big grow-out group there are surplus that we turn into table meet.

We also Breed Black Copper Marans and Basque Hens. The Marans is a darker meet than the commercial broilers with a quite rich flavor. The Basque Cockerels have a lighter meat and are a lot more lean than the Marans and with a mild exotic flavor. The Legbar taste the most like the flavor I would call "chicken". It may because the Plymouth Rock was one of the breeds it was created from and the Cornish X Plymouth Rocks is what supplies the majority of our market meet. The Legbar was really tender and tasty. It is a lot smaller than our other two breeds. They usually are consumed by the family in one meal while the the Marans and Basque usually have enough meat for left-overs to be put in the refrigerator.

My egg record for two of my breeding hens over the past year both came in right at 165 eggs. They both when broody and one raised a brood of chicks. They would have been over the 180 eggs if they han't spent time incubating eggs rather than laying them.

 

[chooketychook]

I have been eating Cream Legbar cockerel all month.  I breed them for the lovely Blue eggs but in every big grow-out group there are surplus that we turn into table meet. 

We also Breed Black Copper Marans and Basque Hens.  The Marans is a darker meet than the commercial broilers with a quite rich flavor.  The Basque Cockerels have a lighter meat and are a lot more lean than the Marans and with a mild exotic flavor.  The Legbar taste the most like the flavor I would call "chicken".  It may because the Plymouth Rock was one of the breeds it was created from and the Cornish X Plymouth Rocks is what supplies the majority of our market meet.  The Legbar was really tender and tasty.  It is a lot smaller than our other two breeds. They usually are consumed by the family in one meal while the the Marans and Basque usually have enough meat for left-overs to be put in the refrigerator.

My egg record for two of my breeding hens over the past year both came in right at 165 eggs.  They both when broody and one raised a brood of chicks.  They would have been over the 180 eggs if they han't spent time incubating eggs rather than laying them. 

Thankyou very much for this response it is exactly what I needed,I didnt really want to sell my cockerals as people use them to cock fight Therefor id prefare to humanly cull my own roo's for a purpose,I will only be a very small breeder probebly incubating 15eggs max at a time to begin with,im glad to hear the meat is good,what age do you process your legbar roos?

 

[GaryDean26]

The group I have right now were processed between 18-22 weeks old. The largest one in the group was just over 5 pounds (the smallest were only about 3-1/2 pounds). With a few more years of selection I hope to have them all over 5 pounds.

You can process them a lot younger if you already know which ones you will NOT retain for breeding. "Poussin" or "Spring Chickens" as we call them inthe USA are havested at 1-1-1/2 pounds. I just processed two Marans Cockerels that were at that size. I was told the meat is much better at the young age. I haven't done the taste test yet, but if it is too my liking I will not be growing out as many cockerels to the full 20 weeks for final section because we are always tight on coop space.

If you get 12 to hatch from your 15 eggs that is a nice sized group grow-out group. That is what size groups we started with. This year we expanded the grow-out area and stepped things up to groups of about 30-40 chicks. We will keep one cockerel from the group and about 10 good layers. If we have any really good #2 or #3 cockerels well will sell them with some of the cull pullet. We only sell cockerels with pullets or to people that already have Cream Legbars. We haven't sold any older pullet of laying hens yet since we are still building up our flock, but are getting ready to trim down the size of our laying flock that is mostly made up of 11-12 month old hens because the 5 month old pullets we hatched this spring will start laying any day now.