How young is too young?

[cottontail farm]

This is a bizarre question, and hate me if you want to but I have like 30 chickens running around my yard right now. I have my little flock of layers that will be kept over the winter but also a ton of dual purpose, straight run chicks that are about 5 or 6 weeks old. Most of the chicks are roosters, going to the freezer at some point anyway. At this age, they are bigger than my meat quail and about the size of a bantam chicken I'm thinking of putting them in the freezer at 8 weeks, even though they would be tiny, just so I don't feel like I'm overrun with chickens anymore.

What to do? I would be butchering the little roosters only and adding the little hens to my laying flock.

Two lines of thought on this:
1) THEY ARE BABIES! I can't get past that one.
2) Plenty of people, including me, send cornish cross off regularly at 7 to 8 weeks so why on earth am I having an issue with #1?

Opinions please?

 

[Poultrybreeder]

I dont think your a bad person for butchering. If your gonna butcher may as well butcher young. I feel bad about butchering crockpot age chickens because they have already been around so long.

 

[Mylied]

Babies or adults, meat is meat, imo. It's just a matter of them not having a very lot of meat on them at that age. I butchered my roosters (that were an egg laying breed of roosters) around 3 months and they still didn't have a very lot of meat on their bones. But I guess you are right and eat quail, so maybe it'd make the same amount as you are used to. If you don't want them running around and are satisfied that they are big enough for you, go ahead and process them.

 

[cottontail farm]

The cornish cross I'm raising have another 4 weeks. I think i'll do these roosters then too. Some of them have a nice shape and look like they're going to make a cornish hen type meal, but the barred rocks - ugh. They're like nugget sized.

 

[BantyChooks]

I say go ahead and butcher. They still end up dead either way & you'll save on feed.

 

[ButtonquailGirl14]

butcher. but I do feel bed killing babies but then again I feel bad killing anything

 

[Mylied]

The cornish cross I'm raising have another 4 weeks. I think i'll do these roosters then too. Some of them have a nice shape and look like they're going to make a cornish hen type meal, but the barred rocks - ugh. They're like nugget sized.

Yeah, about half the ones I did were black sex link. Didn't think it'd be worth the effort when they were younger. But I also have pigs, so if I need to dispatch a bird, I can toss the body to the pigs without having to gut and pluck. In the end, I'm getting something out of it when my sow has piglets or I butcher a pig. So if a rooster annoys me too much and is not worth the effort of cleaning, well he's pig food.

 

[Parront]

Lots of cornish-x only live 6 weeks, 42 days. They are just bigger at that young age. I raised some Buff Orpingtons years ago, they were 6 months old and still only weighed ~3 lb dressed. They ate like growing teenagers the whole time, feed-wise the cornish-x are a much better meat bird. As soon as they start crowing and being annoying, string 'em up is my 2 cents worth. Cut them in half and broil them if they are only a pound, that is 1/2 pound serving per person. You have to like picking bones, like BBQ ribs.

 

[cottontail farm]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Not sure why I'm feeling guilty. Maybe because the barred rocks are just so dang small.
What happened is that I impulse got a bunch of straight runs at TSC (clearance! 99cents!) thinking they'd be about 50% roos and well, it was more like 80-90%. Who thinks that was an accident? Lol. Oh well. Live and learn.
Thanks for the encouragement. If the barred rocks are just ridiculous when they're butchered at least the cats will eat very well.
It is astonishing and disturbing to be raising dual purpose (free range) and the same time raising cornish cross. It makes it REALLY obvious just how franken chicken the cornish cross are

 

[Parront]

I was looking up my pressure cooker fried chicken for another thread. The book is dated 1974. What modern person cooks chicken in the pressure cooker? Nobody, because of the Cornish-X. This book refers to young tender birds as 1 1/2 pounds. That is your target weight for your barred rock or my Orpingtons from long ago. My mistake was trying to get them as big as the Cornish-X! Now that we have this forum, you do not have to make the same mistake. The old cook book said larger birds would be 4 pounds. I got a Cornish from the store last week and the smallest one was over 5 pounds! Young bird would be about 3 pounds live to get 1.5 dressed. P.S. They do taste better than Cornish-X!