Hatching Eggs From Ideal's Black Broilers

[Fairview01]

I'm growing out some black broilers from Ideal and at just 2 weeks old they are rather hefty. Not much smaller than 4 week old wheaten marans.

Was wondering if anyone saved and eggs from the hens fertilized by a BB rooster. What did you get? Curious weather this is a hybrid and loses all it's vigor in the F2 generation and it isn't worth the effort. If you crossed it to something else, what was it and the results or is it just better to occasionally buy the chicks.

 

[JRNash]

I haven't used ideals but I have used Welp Hatcheries slow grow broiler.
In my case,
They lay like a good dual purpose and the offspring were large. Whether they were exactly the same, I can't say. Didn't pay attention that closely. Hope that correlates

 

[JRNash]

I've crossed mine with the following breeds
Barred Rocks
Dark Cornish
Jersey Giant
Dark copper marans
Easter egger
And Saipan.
All the above were males over the welp hens. They all exhibit excellent highbrid vigor. Some of the Saipan crosses are almost the size of my royal palm turkeys

 

[JRNash]

IMO, they make excellent dual purpose birds. The crosses with barred rocks had the perfect broiler look.

 

[Fairview01]

I sent an e-mail to Ideal asking them if the black broilers would be true. They actually responded to it saying they would. That's some talk I think I may test out considering everything I've read on the forum is that those birds are a hybrid cross fro a dark cornish and a black austraulorp. Either case they will probably eat just as well.

I have four hatchery cuckoo marans. Very heavy bodied birds. I may stick the best rooster in with them as an experiment.

 

[JRNash]

My avatar is the result of a coppermaran over a welp slow Cx

 

[Fairview01]

At 3 weeks what I do know is that the BBs are outpacing the white rocks with the same hatch date. About 1.5X their size in girth and height. I can see the muscle on these guys and I can feel it when I pick them up. Solid. The one cockerel I can identify already is a monster. I bought the white rocks because I read that when crossed back to a meat bird the resulting chicks are extremely large breasted. Compared to the BBs the rocks look puny.

I have 6 week old marans. most of the BBs are as big as they are. They eat a lot of feed of course for that growth rate. Thinking of adding some cracked corn once I get their run completely closed in next week. Can't help but think a lot of the protein in the feed is being inefficiently converted to carbs as an energy source.

On the smaller cockerels gonna try my hand at making capons out of them. Don't need but two, one after getting fertile eggs and hatching them.

 

[Winter Creek Coop]

Any update raising, breeding, or butchering these birds? Thanks.