Managing a Dual Purpose Breed Flock for Eggs and Meat

[LilyD]

There are quite a few people up here that actually prefer dual purpose heritage breeds over CornishX birds like the grocery store sells. I am planning much the same thing but only for my personal and family consumption. I am using Heritage Orpington chickens and will change out roosters and hens adding the best of the babies each year and bringing in new blood as needed to help with traits we are having issues with

 

[pkarkos]

There are quite a few people up here that actually prefer dual purpose heritage breeds over CornishX birds like the grocery store sells. I am planning much the same thing but only for my personal and family consumption. I am using Heritage Orpington chickens and will change out roosters and hens adding the best of the babies each year and bringing in new blood as needed to help with traits we are having issues with

I really the love orpintons we have in our mixed breed egg layer flock. How do you find their rate of egg laying?

 

[LilyD]

For the heritage ones that I had I was getting an egg a day from each hen. Only issue is they do go broody and raise out babies but because I want them to be dual purpose I want babies each year that I can then raise up and butcher for the freezer. Unlike the Cochins I had or the Brahmas when one goes broody the rest don't tend to follow they tend to alternate so I was still getting a decent number of eggs even while raising up babies.

 

[Kris5902]

I don’t know how well the jersey giants would work out... I’ve heard they can have size related health issues and are quite slow to mature. I’ve never worked with them though, and don’t know anyone first hand who has. The other breeds all sound like good choices, of course it also depends on what the available lines are like in your area for each one. A breeder near me has successfully bred a very good line of BCM for meat birds, so you can also select for the desirable traits and improve whatever line of breed/s you decide on.

I hope you don’t mind my sharing this here, but you mentioned cattle as well in your original post, and a good thing to consider is the potential for the meat boys to also improve your pasture/fields. I was allowed to experiment a bit with our Worst hay field this spring, and here are some pictures of what my layer tractors did for the grasses. They were on this area from January-March, 26 birds in two tractors. Edit to add: I’m a west coaster... so a fairly different climate!

The red circles are the night soil deposits from the roost bars, the yellow is a nasty undesirable sedge grass nothing eats... so ignore that, and you can see the overall difference in the area between the black lines where I had my chickens. Any longer than two days on the same area, with 10-12 birds per 6x12 tractor destroys the grass though, at least with active layers. I ran them on the poorest and driest section of the field as well. It’s named “the gravel pit” for a reason!

 

[pkarkos]

I don’t know how well the jersey giants would work out... I’ve heard they can have size related health issues and are quite slow to mature. I’ve never worked with them though, and don’t know anyone first hand who has. The other breeds all sound like good choices, of course it also depends on what the available lines are like in your area for each one. A breeder near me has successfully bred a very good line of BCM for meat birds, so you can also select for the desirable traits and improve whatever line of breed/s you decide on.

I hope you don’t mind my sharing this here, but you mentioned cattle as well in your original post, and a good thing to consider is the potential for the meat boys to also improve your pasture/fields. I was allowed to experiment a bit with our Worst hay field this spring, and here are some pictures of what my layer tractors did for the grasses. They were on this area from January-March, 26 birds in two tractors. Edit to add: I’m a west coaster... so a fairly different climate!

View attachment 1755390
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The red circles are the night soil deposits from the roost bars, the yellow is a nasty undesirable sedge grass nothing eats... so ignore that, and you can see the overall difference in the area between the black lines where I had my chickens. Any longer than two days on the same area, with 10-12 birds per 6x12 tractor destroys the grass though, at least with active layers. I ran them on the poorest and driest section of the field as well. It’s named “the gravel pit” for a reason!

Yeah, I have heard some mixed things about the jersey giants, but they do look very cute and chubby. I would love to have the copper marans, but I can imagine they might be a bit expensive.
Those are great picture! Thank you for sharing. I would definitely love to do some pasture rotation with the birds in the pig and cattle pastures. Right now we rotate our flocks through our vegetable greenhouses.

 

[Ribh]

I have BAs & BRs ~ hens only. They are both big birds & very good layers. The BRs did have a tendency to go broody this summer but they are still laying as we go into autumn so it seems to be evening out. BRs are supposed to be winter layers as well ~ something to consider maybe.

 

[The Dapper Duck]

I would steer you away from the Australorps when comparing to the others for eggs. The boys do make a nice carcass and they are really fast growing, so that is nice about them, but I was a little disappointed in the size of the eggs. They are generally large but lean more toward medium than Xlarge, which was a bummer when I got my flock for egg production. I had to market medium eggs at a reduced price at one point just to get rid of them.

 

[Molpet]

a guy did a study on heritage breeds
https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fnc12-866/

 

[LilyD]

a guy did a study on heritage breeds
https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fnc12-866/
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Looks like the orps didn't make the list lol. I so far am liking them. I did do Dorkings but their egg production wasn't great so looking for meaty with good eggs. Orps Males are around 5-6 lbs at 18-20 weeks 8 to 10 lbs live weight at a year and full grown. Older girls I just processed were around 6lbs dressed out and the one I skinned and removed the fat from (very nice thick fat layer) was around 5lbs had decent breasts on them and good size legs and thighs. Definitely not as good as a cornishX for meat to feed ratio but I'll take it because I can make them on my own lol.

 

[Molpet]

Looks like the orps didn't make the list lol. I so far am liking them. I did do Dorkings but their egg production wasn't great so looking for meaty with good eggs. Orps Males are around 5-6 lbs at 18-20 weeks 8 to 10 lbs live weight at a year and full grown. Older girls I just processed were around 6lbs dressed out and the one I skinned and removed the fat from (very nice thick fat layer) was around 5lbs had decent breasts on them and good size legs and thighs. Definitely not as good as a cornishX for meat to feed ratio but I'll take it because I can make them on my own lol.

they sent him pullets instead of cockerels in the orps LOL

I kept a cx hen, bred her to a mix roo... and have been using her offspring .. does add some breast meat and a little quicker.. cockerels 5-7 lbs at 16 wks