Managing a Dual Purpose Breed Flock for Eggs and Meat

[pkarkos]

a guy did a study on heritage breeds
https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fnc12-866/
View attachment 1755647

This is very helpful, thank you!

 

[Mosey2003]

Not reading past page two, here are my thoughts with what more information has been presented:

If you want to stick with dual purpose, what I would suggest is finding GOOD Barred Plymouth Rocks and GOOD New Hampshires. My Rock cockerels butchered at 4lbs around 16-18 weeks, not a bad carcass. You could market those as "Heritage" and some people will definitely pay more for that. The NH should dress out similarly or better.

The idea of those two breeds specifically is if you put a NH cock over a BR hen, you'll get black sexlinks. That allows you to separate them by sex at hatch and you can feed the males and females differently. Also, if you have reptile and snake people in your area, many will buy day old chicks to feed them, you can unload some males that way before they're even on the payroll.

The sexlink hens will lay quite well for you. The sexlink males, if you're using good heavy heritage stock, will dress out pretty well too. You can still call them Heritage even.

Then you could also order a batch of Cornish X broilers if you'd like, to sell as "normal" table birds.

If you want to go with that plan, I'm pretty sure Jeremy Woeppel still breeds both of those and will be able to mail you chicks. You can even ask for all NH males if you like. His website is www.xwpoultryranch.com and I believe he's in Nebraska.

 

[pkarkos]

Not reading past page two, here are my thoughts with what more information has been presented:

If you want to stick with dual purpose, what I would suggest is finding GOOD Barred Plymouth Rocks and GOOD New Hampshires. My Rock cockerels butchered at 4lbs around 16-18 weeks, not a bad carcass. You could market those as "Heritage" and some people will definitely pay more for that. The NH should dress out similarly or better.

The idea of those two breeds specifically is if you put a NH cock over a BR hen, you'll get black sexlinks. That allows you to separate them by sex at hatch and you can feed the males and females differently. Also, if you have reptile and snake people in your area, many will buy day old chicks to feed them, you can unload some males that way before they're even on the payroll.

The sexlink hens will lay quite well for you. The sexlink males, if you're using good heavy heritage stock, will dress out pretty well too. You can still call them Heritage even.

Then you could also order a batch of Cornish X broilers if you'd like, to sell as "normal" table birds.

If you want to go with that plan, I'm pretty sure Jeremy Woeppel still breeds both of those and will be able to mail you chicks. You can even ask for all NH males if you like. His website is www.xwpoultryranch.com and I believe he's in Nebraska.

Thank you! This is very helpful. Would RI Reds work for the sexlink crosses? I would rather have RI reds than NH because I had a NH rooster who was a demon. I have read that NH can be quite docile so he might have just been an anomaly.

 

[Mosey2003]

Thank you! This is very helpful. Would RI Reds work for the sexlink crosses? I would rather have RI reds than NH because I had a NH rooster who was a demon. I have read that NH can be quite docile so he might have just been an anomaly.

They'd work for the sexlink coloring, but won't give as nice of a carcass. The NH is bred to be a meat bird and is closer in type to the BR than a RIR is, they have a brick body shape. A good Heritage RIR is decent for eating too, but NH really is the preferred cross for black sexlinks. A Heritage bird is going to have a better temperament on the whole than any from a hatchery, I wouldn't rule out the NH on one bad rooster. Typically, RIR males from hatcheries are very often absolute demons, the hatcheries don't pay any mind to temperament whatsoever on the whole and what they call RIR are actually Production Reds.

 

[Mosey2003]

Besides, if you get a box of chicks you'll get more than one male, so you can raise them up and see who you like best anyway. If you go that direction, I would mark them and keep track of which feather the fastest, and then which gain weight the fastest, and choose the fastest of those who has a good temperament. Same with the Barred pullets, ideally.

 

[Mrs. K]

I would vote looking at a good Delaware bird, not a hatchery bird. They were bred for this very purpose, and got niched out with the cornish cross. I had some from Sandhills and they were good layers and seemed thicker meat wise. I only butchered one, coyotes seem to really like white birds.

 

[pkarkos]

I would vote looking at a good Delaware bird, not a hatchery bird. They were bred for this very purpose, and got niched out with the cornish cross. I had some from Sandhills and they were good layers and seemed thicker meat wise. I only butchered one, coyotes seem to really like white birds.

Yes, the Delawares do seem to come out to be a good weight, but I have read that they are not actually great layers. How have you found their egg laying rate?

 

[Doublete]

https://www.deerrunfarmmd.com/pages/delaware

According to their info it’s a very good DP breed... (I’ve gone with ameracauna and welsummer from this hatchery and they are extremely healthy chicks)

 

[Ridgerunner]

Whether or not a strain of Delaware or any other breed of chickens are good layers depends a lot on the person selecting which birds get to breed. If you take a flock of Delaware and split them randomly, then breed one flock to be good layers, they will be in a few generations. If you do not use egg laying as a section criteria in the other flock they probably won't be. To me, strain is more important than breed in many aspects. In general hatchery birds lay pretty well compared to breed averages.

Before the Cornish X took over as the meat bird back in the 1950's, the main meat breeds were Delaware, New Hampshire, and some strains of White Rock. Not all White Rock just some strains. But when the Cornish X took over hatcheries had no reason to keep breeding the others as meat birds, neither did private breeders. The result, the meat qualities were lost. If you can find someone breeding for meat qualities, Delaware, New Hampshire, and maybe even White Rock would be a good choice. So would some other dual purpose breeds if you can find them.

Hens had to lay eggs for the original meat birds in the early 1900's to hatch from. Wouldn't you want the parent flock that laid those hatching eggs to lay a lot of hatchable eggs? I'd be surprised if laying a lot of eggs wasn't part of the flock requirements. They would not have to be double extra huge, just hatchable.

 

[Kris5902]

I would rather medium to large eggs personally... one of the hybrid reds laid a 100gram egg the other day! Really that’s just too big. Most of them are around 85-90g. It’s really too bad so many heritage meat breeds stopped being produced as the CX rose in popularity.