I want to hatch my own meat bird. What rooster and hen to use?

[kfacres]

I was reading this chart
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

To determine the breeds I was interested in. Anyone have any major disagreements about their list of dual-purpose?

All charts are based off the SOP- -yet when MOST, especially ALL BIG TIME hatcheries make breeding decisions, it sure isn't based from the SOP.

So therefore, this chart, and any chart- is as only as accurate as where you bought the birds from.

 

[kfacres]

I'm sorry I'm still a little confused. What is a "hatchery" bird? What makes a buff orp I can buy from a local breeder less suitable for breeding my own meat birds than a cornish x?

If cross breeding two dual purpose breeds can't eventually give a bird more meat on it's bones, how did we ever end up with crosses that grow so much meat they can't walk and die at 8 weeks of a heart attack?

60 years of selective breeding worldwide with millions or even billions of breeder birds.

Read my BYC Page for more info on the CX birds. They are actually a hybrid 4 way cross...

Your Backyarder breeding a cornish to a white rock, won't come close to anything but have a white bird that you can eat.

 

[jesirose]

hatcheries make money based off number of chicks sold.

it's hard to hatch chicks, when you cannot get eggs laid.

Most 'true' birds of close to the SOP, are average to poor eggs layers-- yet many of the 'hatchery' sourced DP type birds, lay an egg a day, or 6 a week.

If you think that the 'hatchery' style chicken is what it is supposed to be, go buy a copy of the SOP- you'll often find qualities in those birds that is not accepted-- most noteably weight. and as we all know, weight- is pounds, pounds is muscle.

Personal experience:

My parent's buy a bunch of "DP" brown egg layers at Farm King each spring, breeds are common- barred rock, orpington, RIR, white rock, N. Hampshires Reds, EE, etc. We put the axe to 10-15 of these "DP" cockerels in December (they were April hatched). On the same day, we put the axe to a group of my 'breeder' type Cornish- and it was no comparision-- which one would expect.

Now, the real story comes to my half cornish cockerels that were also butchered that day (June- Aug hatched). Their mothers were either Show quality Ameraucanas, or hatchery silkies. Now, any common sense person knows that a true Ameraucana female isn't much bigger than Leghorn, somewhat meatier-- but the only thing that even rivels a hatchery quality silkie for a lack of carcass-- might be a production white leghorn-- and even then, I think I'll put my money to the leghorn for poundage.

Long story short, my half cornish, half silkie EMBARRASSED the Farm King DP type carcasses. Granted they are half Cornish-- but in any regard, they are also half Silkie- and on average were 2-3 months younger!

Your signature says you sell hatching eggs. Are you a hatchery? It also says you're breeding a meat bird. I'm just a little confused why you seem to be so against someone else doing what it seems you're doing? Where did you get your stock? Why do you keep talking about hatcheries?

 

[jesirose]

60 years of selective breeding worldwide with millions or even billions of breeder birds.

Read my BYC Page for more info on the CX birds. They are actually a hybrid 4 way cross...

Your Backyarder breeding a cornish to a white rock, won't come close to anything but have a white bird that you can eat.

A. I didn't say I was going to breed those birds.
B. I specifically do not want a cornish cross. I don't want a bird that can barely move because it's so heavy.

I'm sorry you seem to have a problem with me, I'd rather not continue this based on your posts. Thanks.

 

[sandspoultry]

Dark Cornish has always been one of our favorite meat birds and we have prefered the taste of Marans. We are breeding Cornish roosters to Black Copper and Cuckoo Marans hens. I'll update in the fall how it worked out

 

[Our Roost]

"Dual purpose" birds. I don't believe for a minute that hatcheries are falsifying their statements about bird breeds for sales promotions. Not all of them are listed as dual purpose, its just the facts and the history behind it they are using to give you some general information. I never said hatchery dual purpose birds carried more weight, what I did say was that the breed has been used for dual purpose and are generally more hardy and tend to carry a bit more weight or meat on their bones. Read up on the expected weight of hens and roos for each breed! You will find most dual purpose birds in any brochure weigh more. Or they just taste good! If you think cross breeding 2 different strains of birds is going to get you a meat bird, then go for it. Its best to read up on how the strain of cornish x came about before you think you can make a meat bird in your own backyard. The feed you give your birds plays a very important role and is a key factor to putting weight on your birds. Selecting good mating stock verses runts is another factor. Hatcheries mass produce eggs and you don't get to hand select what you are getting. Some are awesome and some are not. Just my perspective.

 

[kfacres]

Your signature says you sell hatching eggs. Are you a hatchery? It also says you're breeding a meat bird. I'm just a little confused why you seem to be so against someone else doing what it seems you're doing? Where did you get your stock? Why do you keep talking about hatcheries?

Selling hatching eggs, and selling chicks are completely different. Hatcheries don't sell eggs, and breeders don't sell chicks. My birds were purchased from breeders. I would never recommend that anyone buy anything from a 'hatchery', unless they wanted egg production, or cheap investments. If you want a meat bird from a hatchery, buy the CX>

I'm not against it (breeding your own meat bird), what I am against is the uninformed, uneducated people thinking that they can breed a mouse to a mouse, and get a moose.

Basically, I'm telling you to do more research before you come on here telling a bunch of people who have been doing something very successfully for a number of years that your idea is going to work, when clearly it's proven not to. It might not effect you directly, but all these posts are archived, and any person years from now can revisit to learn. What we don't want is them reading crazy thoughts.

Do what you want, i don't care. But if you're looking for an idea to get a profitable, quick growing meaty type bird that can reproduce, and live healthy functional lives---------------- there are plenty of options, just not any you have mentioned-- for goodness sake, don't try to reinvent the wheel.

 

[Our Roost]

Well jesirose, I'm curious after reading all the posts as to what you gethered and what you are now thinking? This is my second year of raising chicks and when we started we decided on birds for both meat and eggs. Of the 25 hens we ordered, 3 became roosters we hadn't planned on. We selected 5 birds each of different breeds both for variety and to see how well we liked them. All but 5 were dual purpose egg and meat birds. Note that these were all from a local hatchery near our area. We havent yet got into buying stock from a private breeder owning blue ribbon show class birds. 4H club is about as classy as we will ever get I imagine and we plan to show a select few of our hatchery quality birds there this summer. In about another month we will process some birds for meat. We are keeping the best stock for breeding our own birds. Of the 5 breeds we purchased, we narrowed it down to only keeping 2 or 3 of those breeds as meat birds and 1 will be primarily for egg production. Our primary egg layers are black sex links. This year we purchased 3 blue orpingtons and 3 blue laced red wyandottes. After all our reading on the cornish x grocery store meat bird, we decided against these as a meat bird in our future thoughts. I think we would be better to fatten up a few of our own from the stock we have chosen. We haven't gotten to that point yet to see how this is going to work out. I wish us both well in our efforts to put a tasty fat bird on the dinner plate! Choose well!

 

[galanie]

I'm just restating something that has already been said but in a different way, hopefully for clarity.

What the hatcheries say about each breed is usually fairly accurate. The problem is, that most of the time the ones you actually recieve from them are not what the catalog or brochure says. Case in point: My hatchery Buff Orpingtons. Catalog states that the hens are 6-8 lbs at maturity. Well, my hatchery BO's at 3 years old don't weigh that much! They are more like 4 lbs and visibly overweight. I know this because I have actually and for real weighed them.

I was lucky enough to obtain a trio from a breeder of Buff Orpingtons that is breeding them to the SOP. The pullets, at 6 months old weighed 6 lbs and had been laying already for a month. The difference between a bird from a hatchery and one from a breeder that is breeding to the standard can be astounding.

I believe kfacres to have a great backyard meat bird. He has done so not by using hatchery birds but from getting a few truly nice birds from a breeder. What he is saying does make sense. Sometimes we don't see eye to eye and he can be abrasive but he is correct in this one.

 

[jesirose]

Well jesirose, I'm curious after reading all the posts as to what you gethered and what you are now thinking? This is my second year of raising chicks and when we started we decided on birds for both meat and eggs. Of the 25 hens we ordered, 3 became roosters we hadn't planned on. We selected 5 birds each of different breeds both for variety and to see how well we liked them. All but 5 were dual purpose egg and meat birds. Note that these were all from a local hatchery near our area. We havent yet got into buying stock from a private breeder owning blue ribbon show class birds. 4H club is about as classy as we will ever get I imagine and we plan to show a select few of our hatchery quality birds there this summer. In about another month we will process some birds for meat. We are keeping the best stock for breeding our own birds. Of the 5 breeds we purchased, we narrowed it down to only keeping 2 or 3 of those breeds as meat birds and 1 will be primarily for egg production. Our primary egg layers are black sex links. This year we purchased 3 blue orpingtons and 3 blue laced red wyandottes. After all our reading on the cornish x grocery store meat bird, we decided against these as a meat bird in our future thoughts. I think we would be better to fatten up a few of our own from the stock we have chosen. We haven't gotten to that point yet to see how this is going to work out. I wish us both well in our efforts to put a tasty fat bird on the dinner plate! Choose well!

Hi there

Unfortunately my thoughts on it may not be super helpful to people like you who are mostly raising birds to eat themselves or to sell the meat and make money - my goal is a bit different. My primary goal in breeding a bird for me is to create a good dual-purpose bird that can live a healthy life, reproduce on it's own, and raise it's own chicks. I also think the cornish cross grocery store variety is not the way to go. I think it's incredibly cruel to raise a bird that is at such risk of health issues and has such a high accepted mortality rate. An animal that can't reproduce on it's own because it doesn't live long enough before dying of heart attacks and broken legs is not natural, humane, or ethical. IMHO. Others are free to disagree, I don't think they're bad people, they can do whatever they want with their birds. but it's not for me. What I want in my bird is:
A. lay eggs - not every day, just enough so that they can:
B. hatch their eggs and raise their young
C. Have enough meat that my dogs will eat it

We don't plan to eat these, at least not until we've spent a lot of time working on it (so years from now or if SHTF anytime soon). My primary goal is to feed my dogs. (I talked about this in another thread, we feed our dogs a raw diet and spend probably close to $250 a month on meat, bones, organs. I'm sick of paying someone else to factory farm animals when I could raise them humanely.) The dogs will think it tastes great, they're dogs.

Once we have a mix we are happy with in terms of brooding and having enough meat for that purpose, I would probably cross back in more meaty birds if I wanted meat for us. I think we have time before we truly have to rely on that, and I'm willing to wait and work on it long term. I'm not going to breed to sell other people the meat, so I don't care so much how it tastes to other people. The only people I would consider selling meat to are friends who share similar goals and beliefs, and that's if we have too much (which I don't see happening)

I personally don't even like the taste of any meat but I eat chicken and ground beef as the least objectional tastes to me. Put enough spice or sauce on it, I won't notice if it's darker or stringier than grocery store meat, cause grocery store meat tastes nasty to me. I'm actually assuming based on my previous experiences butchering chickens and rabbits that any meat I raise will taste better than the grocery store because that's how it's always been before. I don't know what breed those chickens were though, that wasn't my area on the farm so much. I doubt they were crosses that couldn't reproduce though because that's not how that farm operated either.

Being as self-sufficient as possible is more important to me than having a huge bird that I can sell for money or get a ton of white meat from. So do I think my project will "work"? Yes, for my purposes, I'm sure I can achieve the goal I want. I never said I wanted to create the best or "ultimate" meat bird for other people. (By the way, for some people who want to tell others they will fail, you might consider telling people what you think is a GOOD idea, not just telling them all their ideas will fail. It does no good to say "you're wrong" without giving any direction as to what you think RIGHT is. You're just being a know-it-all otherwise.)



So far the only birds I've bought are for eggs. My other goal in breeding is to make olive-eggers (and go past a few generations, not crosses). I do have a ton of egg customers and I've got a waiting list of weeks, so right now I'm buying laying hens and chicks that will lay eggs I want. We started with 4 hens last year and they were all prolific, we got 3-4 eggs a day from our RIR, NHR, Black Australorp and "Black star" (some local black sex link). We added 3 "easter eggers" and a white marans this year, then yesterday I got 3 cuckoo marans and an americauna. Going to get more marans and a trio of cream legbars this weekend. Then we'll be good on egg layers for a while. I think when I'm ready to start my "meat" project (which is more like a "dual-purpose" project of course) I will still start with orpingtons because I like what I've read about them. I still have a lot of research to do but I have time.

I love genetics and I think it's really cool how easy and "cheap" you can experiment with chickens. With dogs for example if you breed two dogs and the puppies are not what you wanted, now you're stuck with 5-10 pets that need good lifetime homes. You breed a chicken and she lays the wrong color eggs? Someone will still eat them. You get a rooster and he's not what you wanted? In our case, dinner for the dogs. And I know that they all will have been treated nicely with fresh air, grass, bugs, etc. Not kept in a cage like puppy-mill puppies. They also require a lot less attention. Our dogs are time and money black-holes. The chickens are happy to have a few minutes a day of interaction, and then go back to digging that dust pit in my backyard