Live-weight versus dressed?

[extraordinaryfowl]

Does anyone know how much weight is lost when butchering a guineas? I read that a 2.75-3.25 pound (live weight) guinea will dress out at 2.25-2.75 pounds cleaned. My guineas look awfully small too me too dress but the meat ones weigh 3-3.25 pounds at this point.

 

[PeepsCA]

How old are your birds? From what I have read, live bird weight for Jumbos or French is supposed to be around 4lbs by 12 wks... I am not sure what weight they dress out at tho, I don't raise Jumbos or French, just regular Helmeted Guinea Fowl. I have never weighed my birds live/before processing, I've just been feeling the breasts on the younger birds and comparing them to an older healthy bird to see if I think there is enough meat on them yet. 12 wks is typically too young for processing my birds, I've found they are at a little better at around 16-18 wks (but that may be not the most economical age to process them at if you are watching yours costs).

After they are dressed out the younger birds' (males) weights have ranged between 2.8-3.26lbs. Older males (1yr+) are a little bigger but mainly just have a little more leaf and organ fat than the younger males (but the meat on the younger birds is more tender). The Hens I have processed were all older girls (2yrs+) and were all in the 3.25-3.45lbs range, but I did process one blubber butt Hen that was 3.58 dressed out. She was always one of the more docile birds (lazy?) in the flock and had a silly amount of fat on her hind end, it jiggled after she was plucked

These are all males, somewhere between 20-25 wks old (I had too many aggressive males of the same colors and decided to cull). The biggest bird on the left in the trio in the bottom pic was the 3.26lb bird.

 

[extraordinaryfowl]

Thanks, my standard guineas are 3.25 now and the Jumbos are 3.5 at this point. They are 16 weeks. I have them out on grass so I guess that could account for slower growth like it does with chickens? I just need to make sure they dress out 2-3 pounds after processing to satisfy my buyer's demand.