hurry need to know, do you order bonus chicks too?

[Oregon Blues]

I want meat in exchange for the grain I buy. So I'm not interested in any chick that won't have good feed conversion.

However, if someone lived where they have a large amount of free food for free range chickens, it might be worth it. Free range birds here are called "coyote dinner", so that doesn't work for me.

 

[jcatblum]

I did get 50 bonus chicks in the spring. They were silver laced wandotte & was actually a mix of pullets & cockerels. There website does state often cockerels but they ship whatever surplus birds they haven't sold. I raised the silver laced with my rir. Overall very happy with my free birds. What I wasn't happy with is I purchased my birds right before the salmanila outbreak they had. They never communicated anything about the outbreak. No emails nothing. I won't order from them again.

 

[Bluff Country Chicken]

I didn't get free bonus birds, but I did order Murray McMurray's "All Heavies" special. It sounds like this is what other compamies call "bonus birds" and give away for free. I wish I would've known that...

At any rate, I raised these dual-purpose birds while raising and butchering a couple CX batches at the same time. I totally agree with those who advise against getting these birds. My dual-purpose roosters are now about 17 weeks and have been trying to kill each other for well over a month now. Thank goodness they are located 100 yards from my house because they crow all the time. As for meat yield...they don't even compare to CXs. Their breast meat seems to be about 1/4 that of the CX. Their plucked carcass looks like the ol' gag rubber chickens in comedy sketches. The taste was fine but the behavior, time and effort doesn't seem worth it. I'm not trying this route again. I'd rather pay the extra and get CXs to get a better return on my resources. I must, however, a couple positives of the DPs. They are MUCH cleaner and more interesting for my 2-year-old son to watch.

 

[Bluff Country Chicken]

Another couple things...

Regarding processing, I've found that the lower breast of the DP birds comes down much further towards the vent than on the CXs. This makes it a little more difficult to get your hand in for evisceration. Also, it's a little trickier when cutting around their vents due to how the cartilage (I assume) is structured there.

 

[ChickenAlgebra]

They aren't a bad deal IF you are already raising DP breeds, so you are set up for that (when we got the black sex linked males, we had broody hens who would happily take any babies we offered), and you caponize the cockrels. They get big, tasty and don't crow.

If you don't caponize, they aren't worth it for the noise alone.