How hard would it be to....

[cupman]

Get my hands on the proper type of rooster and the proper type of hens that I could incubate and hatch out my own broilers... chickens that are ready to slaughter at 8 weeks. I've heard you need a specialized rooster and hen to produce the fast growing fatties and I was just trying to gauge the plausibility of me personally finding birds I could produce broilers with.

 

[mstricer]

I saved one of my Freedom Rangers and breed it to a Marans it was good meat but took a little longer to grow. Like 14 weeks

 

[kfacres]

immpossible almost... I've heard you can buy the parent stock, but not the grandparent stock... which is the real key to making them reproduceable.

They are under lock and key, and I would imagine require AI.

 

[Oregon Blues]

How qualified are you as a cat burglar?

 

[booker81]

Quote:
Pretty much this. There are a few threads in this section about the logistics of breeding and crossbreeding in order to obtain the type of bird that will match the commercial type Cornish X. The likelihood of being able to obtain the qualities of a fast growing (5lb carcass in 8 weeks) broiler with a small breeding program is about nil.

You can breed and raise other type of meat chickens that lean toward large carcasses, but they won't take 8 weeks, and they may not have the traits that seem to be selectively bred for commercial birds - extremely large breasts, high feed conversion, etc.

 

[galanie]

What they said. If it were easy, everyone would do it and the breeders that provide them wouldn't be in business.

 

[cupman]

Ahh shucks. I kind of thought that might be the case. Would sure be nice though.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You can check out this video to see how they do it and see what you are up against. You will notice that they do NOT use Artificial Insemination. You can learn a bit by watching the video. It changed some of my misconceptions.

Broiler Chicken Videos

Even if you had the grandparent stock, unless you knew what to choose for when selecting the breeders to replace them, you'd lose a lot of that advantage pretty fast. It really is hard to keep specialized stock reproducing the way you want for a few generations. With chicken genetics, unless you reinforce the traits you want each generation, you quickly lose it.

I'd have a lot of trouble knowing what to select for. If you get them growing too fast, they have medical problems at an even younger age. It is not as easy as you might think.

 

[kfacres]

Quote:
yes each grandparent is selected for a specific trait, and continued being produced that way.. for some magical reason, those traits click together like sliced bread.. and make what the broiler world has specialized in for centuries.