How many birds in your flock?

[CD Sillivant]

I was wondering how many and what type of meat birds y'all have. I'm thinking about starting my own flock. Thanks in advance.

 

[rjohns39]

Hi and welcome to BYC We're so happy you've decided to join us Right now I've probably got a couple dozen extra cockerels that will be going to the freezer soon. In the spring I'll grow 150 or so CX birds, but that's an 8 week shot. I'm also looking to try some sustainable meat birds that @duluthralphie developed to see if I can get a flock going. I also have heritage turkeys and ducks. Might try some BBs next year just to see how they do.

 

[Ridgerunner]

What kind of meat birds are you interested in? You can get Cornish Cross chicks and put meat in the freezer in about two months, Rangers or Pioneers will give you meat in about three months. You have to buy those chicks. If you raise dual purpose chickens your options are tremendous, we do it so many different ways but there are limitations with them. Just wondering what kind of flock you are interested in. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.

I’m down to my winter flock, earlier than ever before. Usually I overwinter one rooster and 6 to 8 hens and pullets but this year I’m at 9 hens and pullets, sometimes plans get changed and you have to be flexible. In the summer I may have over 50 chickens running around, most of those young chicks growing to butcher age. I exclusively raise dual purpose chickens, almost always ones that I hatch myself, either with an incubator or with a broody hen. And I eat most of my pullets, not just cockerels.

Welcome to the forum, glad you joined.

 

[Morrigan]

@Ridgerunner -- What type of dual purpose birds do you have in your winter flock? I'm trying to persuade my husband to move in this direction rather than getting CX chicks every fall.

 

[Maeschak]

I have about 37 dual purpose and sex link hybrid birds. My 'main' flock is the DP Delaware. I keep a production RIR rooster to cover my Dels and incubate their eggs in the Spring. The result is a sex link hybrid. I keep the hybrid pullets for their laying capacity (they are dark red and better laying than my Del hens) and eat all the cockerels. The sex linked cockerels are easy to identify and they grow faster than my pure DP Del cockerels- making them fantastic to eat at about 14 weeks. (Since they are easy to identify I can put them into a separate 'meat' pen and care for them accordingly).

I also keep two Del roosters so that I can produce more pure Delaware.

It might sound complicated but it isn't- they all live together in one coop (except for the chicks who are brooded in a hoop coop- and once they are ready to merge with my flock as layers the sex link 'meat' cockerel hybrids remain in the hoop coop until about 14 weeks old when I butcher them). If my Del roosters fertilize any Del hen eggs that is fine as well, they are easy to identify against the hybrids and I eat any that I do not want to raise.

Not sure if that helps or not, but I wish you good luck!

(PS- my weird system absolutely depends on keeping DP hens with the silver gene and at least one rooster with the gold gene... The roosters w the gold gene are easy to come by but the DP hens with the silver gene are not so easy...)