Leghorns for meat

[UNCLEG]

I prefer a smaller bird for meat, I currently buy fryers for baking, broiling, ect. I was thinking of getting 15 white Leghorn Roos from a hatchery, its called the frypan special and mostly let these birds free range in the woods behind my home and shut them up at night in the coop at night. I know it would take longer for them to mature and there will be less meat on the carcass, but I am not a real fan of those mutated cornish X. feasable plan or am i barking up wrong tree.

 

[ChickenJerk]

You will have a huge feed bill and a chicken fight before you have much meat with Leghorn cockerels.

If you don't want broilers (which are not mutations but rather selectively bred birds) get some hatchery White Rocks. Better feed conversion to an earlier usable weight. Don't try to save money by getting male brown egg laying sexlinks. They are little better than the Leghorns.

 

[BCMaraniac]

I prefer a smaller bird for meat, I currently buy fryers for baking, broiling, ect.   I was thinking of getting 15 white Leghorn Roos from a hatchery, its called the frypan special and mostly let these birds free range in the woods behind my home and shut them up at night in the coop at night.  I know it would take longer for them to mature and there will be less meat on the carcass, but I am not a real fan of those mutated cornish X.  feasable plan or am i barking up wrong tree.

My 82 y/o FIL talks about catching chickens for his mother to fry when he was a little boy(she always had him catch the young roosters). Any time he does he ALWAYS talks about how little meat was on the Leghorns compared to the others chickens they kept....dominiques, RIRs. He said they were hard to catch, too....LOL.

 

[donrae]

it's feasible, of course. Is it how I'd do things? no.

I agree, you'll have 5 months of feed invested in a bird that will probably butcher out at 2-3lbs. I need a little better return on my investment. If that's okay for you, go for it. Me, I'd want something with a little more meat and would go for at least dual purpose roosters, getting a 4-5ish lb bird for my trouble.