how old should orp roos be when you slaughter them

Depends on how much flavor you want your meat to have and how big you want to let them get. 16 weeks is fairly standard.

 

I just did a couple buff orpingtons a few weeks ago. They were at around 18 weeks and weighed 3.5 pounds and 3.75 pounds or so, without neck and giblets.

Brian

 

If you have the space - I put my grow out cockerels in their own pen at about 12 weeks of age or so. Then I like to let them grow until 5 to 6 months of age. Being a heritage breed - their skeleton/boney frame grows first – then they start to fill out with muscle.

At 5 months my Orp cockerels – processed are approx. 5 pounds. If you can wait longer, there will be more muscle and the muscle will have more flavor due to age.


Great article that talks about the age and cooking of the Heritage chicken. www.albc-usa.org/documents/cookingwheritagechicken.pdf

 

I had my Orpington roos butchered at 6.5 months this year and they averaged 4 pounds.

 

we just got done with a set of large breed roos

we did the buff orps first at 17 weeks because they "looked" bigger. processed weight in the bag as 3.5 lbs

we waited another 2 weeks and did the rest of the roos (mostly barred rocks) and they had added a half a pound on avg.

 

16 - 26 weeks is generally best for dual-purpose breed roos.