Meat Bird Project - Delaware, White Rock, Dark Cornish

[Kiki]

I woke up yesterday to a cold house, cold water, and a REALLY cold incubator. Had a power surge apparently that knocked out several breakers, including the outlet that had the incy. I have a feeling the eggs aren't going to make it, so I'm already planning on my next batch. Eh, it happens, not thrilled but it's not the end of the world. I'm also shopping around for some sold stock of Delawares, White Rocks, and Cornish, as well as some other solid stock of dual-purpose breeds. If anyone knows of anyone in my area, let me know - I'm also willing to travel to get hold of proven meaty birds that would make good crosses.

uh ho....that sucks!

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

uh ho....that sucks!

Yep, it sure does. They didn't make it. I got the electrical issues under control, now back to the drawing board. I have another 14 chicken eggs and 12 duck eggs in the incubator now, testing that method out as well. They're at 6 days in so far, I'll candle them tonight to see what I can see.

 

[Ulladh]

Still followi ng despite my lack of chickens! All sounds awesome man, depending how long they were out you might have been ok? But if the egsg there and time then better safe than poor chicks

 

[TinyBirds]

I wanted to mention we stopped plucking birds and it avoids the hot water danger for us too. To process a bird i just get out the big cutting board and big butcher knife on the porch, plus my disposible gloves. And a smaller foldout style knife that is very sharp and we have a sharpener for. I cut the head off. I used to even put a sock over the head first to help it (and me) get less emotional (i love all my birds). I then go straight to cutting the skin off with feathers still on there. Luckily no one in our family seems to miss the skin since its a lot faster for me this way. When we first started years ago, i did try the cones where you cut the neck to kill it but i really sucked at that and it seemed to make the death take a few seconds longer, which bothered me. Ive seen videos of people that seem better at it but my knife and method just wasnt working that well so the butcher knife became our quick method with no mistakes.

 

[lcertuche]

I can skin a chicken pretty quick and like you we don't really miss the skin. If I could use a chicken plucker I would but it's too expensive and I don't know anyone I could borrow one from.

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

My hatch started on Thursday morning, finished late last night. I started with 14 eggs, 2 didn't seem fertilized (or just didn't make it) at the 14 day candling, and 2 didn't make it through the hatch. That left me with 10. 71% - not a terrible turnout.

Of the 10, 2 appear to be full WR, 2 WR over Del, and the rest are Dark Cornish Crosses. Of the crosses, I think the darker shaded ones may be mixed with Dels and the lighter shades with WR, though that is only a guess. Here are some pics:

Pure White Rocks:


White Rocks over Dels:


Dark Cornish Crosses:




For some reason, the other photos of the lighter yellow and black Cornish Crosses aren't uploading.

A few notes about this hatch. First, the Cornish Crosses were the first to pop out of the shells. 5 of them before both WR/Dels, then the WRs followed by the final black CX. Second, the coloring of the CXs is interesting. It could be that the darker orange ones are males and the lighter yellow are females, it could be that they are WRs and the others are Dels, but that black one is definitely a sex-link. It will be interesting to see if it's a male or female.

I have decided to keep any of the pullets from this batch, and the roos will meet their destiny. Hopefully I'll get at least 1 or 2 females from each segment, then I can see how the DC over another cross matches up to the DC over another heritage.

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

I just had to restart my computer, adjust the size of the files, and reupload - so easy my mom could d.... nevermind, no she couldn't.

The lighter yellow DCXs:


And the gray/brown one:




In the photos, he shows a lot more brown than I've seen yet - he's under a red lamp, so he looks black. But he does have a lot of gray on him, his chest is silver/smokey, and he has a lot of black throughout. (I keep saying "he" as an assumption that he's a cockerel.)

 

[Bigshooter]

If you went with a DC over a WR or Del. You should get red/brown sex links and males that look like there mom.

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

If you went with a DC over a WR or Del. You should get red/brown sex links and males that look like there mom.

Although I didn't separate each hen to mark their individual eggs, I do have a good idea of what mix each one is. And they don't appear to be sex linked, or at least not as you stated. Aside from the brown one, they all appear to be a solid mix of the 2 (3) breeds. I thought that the sex linking happens only when you have certain dominant traits, and that' the stock I have from a hatchery isn't guaranteed to have the same best traits as the standard.

I'm looking forward to starting the weighing process on Tuesday, as that would match the "3 day" weights from the first batch. And by Friday or so I should be able to start differentiating the cockerels from pullets.

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

Okay, so I went back and read this thread from the beginning, and I noticed that I was a bit off with my dates in calculating weights. I started weighing at "3 days", however that was 3 days after I received the chicks, not at 3 days old. And "week 1" was 1 week after I received them. SO, I'm going to stick with that system here as well, to keep comparing apples to apples throughout the process. Kind of a pain, but so be it. Live and learn, right?!

So bear with me here for a minute. I received the chicks on a Friday (7/15/2016), so they were shipped to me on Wednesday, meaning they were likely born on Tuesday ("day old chicks"). If I weighed them on the following Monday (7/18), that would mean my "3 day" weight was actually a 6 day old weight. And just add 3 days onto the rest of the weights going forward.

These chicks were mostly hatched on Thursday, 2/23/2017. So I will weigh them on Wednesday for the first weight, again on Sunday for week 1, and Sundays going forward. Hopefully that will correct for my mistake that I started back in July. I should also be able to start telling the cockerels from the pullets toward the end of March, if not sooner. I am keeping all pullets for my flock, and the cockerels will become dinner. I'd like to separate them as early as possible so I can handle the keepers as often as possible.

So I'll have some weights for you tomorrow. I weighed a couple of them today, and they seem on track with the previous batch. I'll also have another batch hatching toward the end of March (setting them on Friday), and those will only be DCXs, so I'll just weigh them at 4 week intervals to compare their growth rates compared to the heritage breeds.