How does this work?

[chooketychook]

Hiya im a newbie and plan to raise egg,meat and breeding chicks,what Im finding hard to get is how it works ive been reading up and these birds need to be culled by 12 weeks,so how to you get a continuos supply of meat if you have to kill the adult birds? Sorry if this question seems silly I just cant work out how its done,thanks in advance.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Different chickens are bred for different goals. Some are utility and some are just decorations.

Meat chickens have been bred to put on a lot of meat fast. They are extremely efficient in converting feed to meat. They are so efficient they grow so fast their skeleton and heart can’t keep up. They need to be butchered at a very young age before they just break down and die. How they manage to get eggs for hatching is that they limit the feed to the parent flocks. They keep them hungry and on a diet so they don’t get too big and die.

Egg chickens have been bred to lay a lot of fairly large eggs and a lot of them. These chickens have fairly small bodies so most of what they eat goes to egg production, not body maintenance. They don’t have much meat on them so they are not good for eating.

Both of these have been developed through selective breeding over the last 50 to 60 years. There is no gene splicing or fancy stuff like that, just selective breeding by geneticists that know what they are doing. These are both commercial chickens.

Then you have what people have been raising for thousands of years to feed a small farmer and his family, the dual purpose breeds. They grow large enough to provide a reasonable amount of meat, but they are not nearly as efficient as the meat birds in converting feed to meat. You don’t butcher them nearly as young as the meat birds because they just don’t grow that fast. They won’t outgrow their bodies though. They lay a lot of eggs but are not as efficient in converting feed to eggs as the specialized laying birds.

If they can forage for most of their food or you can grow most of their food, they can be fairly efficient as far as meat and eggs, but if you are buying most of what they eat, they cannot touch the specialized birds as far as efficiency.

 

[chooketychook]

Different chickens are bred for different goals. Some are utility and some are just decorations.

Meat chickens have been bred to put on a lot of meat fast. They are extremely efficient in converting feed to meat. They are so efficient they grow so fast their skeleton and heart can’t keep up. They need to be butchered at a very young age before they just break down and die. How they manage to get eggs for hatching is that they limit the feed to the parent flocks. They keep them hungry and on a diet so they don’t get too big and die.

Egg chickens have been bred to lay a lot of fairly large eggs and a lot of them. These chickens have fairly small bodies so most of what they eat goes to egg production, not body maintenance. They don’t have much meat on them so they are not good for eating.

Both of these have been developed through selective breeding over the last 50 to 60 years. There is no gene splicing or fancy stuff like that, just selective breeding by geneticists that know what they are doing. These are both commercial chickens.

Then you have what people have been raising for thousands of years to feed a small farmer and his family, the dual purpose breeds. They grow large enough to provide a reasonable amount of meat, but they are not nearly as efficient as the meat birds in converting feed to meat. You don’t butcher them nearly as young as the meat birds because they just don’t grow that fast. They won’t outgrow their bodies though. They lay a lot of eggs but are not as efficient in converting feed to eggs as the specialized laying birds.

If they can forage for most of their food or you can grow most of their food, they can be fairly efficient as far as meat and eggs, but if you are buying most of what they eat, they cannot touch the specialized birds as far as efficiency.

Thank you very much for that detailed explaination,really appreciated.