For me, my goal is a sustainable flock that can produce birds that dress out around 8 lbs at 14ish weeks. I need my hens to go broody often enough and lay enough eggs that they can raise most of the chicks for me. My goal is a multi-generational flock that always has multiple ages, so I can process a few birds here and there vs having to butcher a whole group of them at once…I already spend 10-15 full days/year helping butcher cattle and hogs, I don’t want to add multiple full long days for chickens too. I pressure cook 100% of my birds, because of our busy schedule, so I skin them out instead of plucking, which eliminates the consideration of having to set up a pluckers and a lot of boiling water every time I butcher.
I need big bird early because I am feeding a family of 7…when I used to buy grocery store birds, a 5.5-6 lb bird couldn’t quite feed the family, so I would have to do two. A 7-8 lb bird will give me enough for a meal plus maybe a few leftovers. I want them to proceed early for feed costs, labor time, but also for flavor. Im particular about my meat taste and texture, and haven’t learned yet to love the deep flavor that comes from older birds.
The birds I chose to start with were Freedom Ranger hatchery New Hampshires, because they come from the Henry Noll line which has been specifically bred for meat for 50+ years. Last year with my first group I had live weights at 6-9 lbs at 13 weeks and dressed weights between 4.5-6 lbs. This year I’m getting more serious and keeping breeding records and weights and breeding from multiple pairs to try to find the best birds to produce those big birds early. My second batch I bought from them early this year (because my breeders weren’t going to raise enough chicks to fill the freezer in time) are 14 weeks right now with live weights ranging from 7-10.5 lbs, with most of the roosters at 9.5 pound or more. Overall I’m very pleased with these birds…I hope with just a little work I can get just a bit more weight on them a bit earlier and meet my goal. I’m also going to try to retain their ability to auto-sex at hatch — the females have broader, darker dorsal stripes with a large dark spot on their head while the boys supposedly have a white patch on their wing between their elbow joint in their chick down (I’ve never seen this yet) and smaller/no spot on their head.
