Meat bird

[LisaZ529]

What breed is best for a meat bird. I am looking for most cost efficient, but still want a tasty bird.

 

[nuthatched]

Cornish x
If you want to breed them, possibly a broiler breed.

 

[Ridgerunner]

What breed is best for a meat bird. I am looking for most cost efficient, but still want a tasty bird.

This is probably the most asked question on this meat bird forum. There is no short answer that covers all of us, though many of us have a favorite.

From a straight cost efficiency, you probably can't beat going to the grocery store and buying your chicken there provided you get basic chicken. The major operations raise the Cornish X which have the best feed per pound of meat ratio, they have the advantage of mass production, and they know how to raise them to get the best profit out of them. Some people like the flavor, others don't.

If you raise them yourself the Cornish X are still the most cost efficient if you raise them pretty much the way the commercial companies do. That includes buying the chicks, you can't hatch them yourself because they are hybrids. You lose some efficiencies because of that plus they are hard to keep alive long enough to breed. There is a lot of discussion on this forum about how to feed and manage them. They can be kind of delicate if you are not careful on how you feed and manage them.

But some people are not happy with the taste. That's where your question gets harder. Taste is a very individual thing. You may like the flavor of the Cornish X. You may not. The Cornish X need to be butchered at a young age so they can be pretty bland. The older they get the more flavor they have. Some people like the Ranger types, they still get big but you can keep them around an extra month before you butcher. They are usually better about foraging for some of their food too, but they still cost more to feed. Some people prefer the dual purpose chickens, a lot of breeds to choose from there. You can get a lot more flavor but they don't get as big and are not nearly as cost effective per pound of meat as the Cornish X or Rangers. You can breed your own though, that is a big attraction for a lot of us.

My suggestion is to try the Cornish X. If you are not happy, try some Rangers. If you are still not happy try dual purpose. Go through this forum and read some threads to get ideas.

 

[Birdinhand]

There are some variables to consider:
-is time and space a limited asset to you?
For me, living in the suburbs, the fast grow out time of the Cornish cross, with hyper efficient grain to meat ratio, is essentially impossible to beat. The longer the grow out, the more likely it would be that a neighbor gets fed-up with the sounds and Smells. The way I do it, I can crank out over a hundred pounds of meat in less than 2 months, enough to feed a family of four for a years, in a relatively small space. There is no other source of animal protein I can produce in my back yard so quickky and affordably…and I don’t have room for a chicken tractor. If I had room for a chicken tractor, I’d still go with the same breed but instead of pure grain feed, they get to forage and eat grass and bugs as well.
-taste is another. The cx is the canvas that I have experimented on with various feed sources, then, with brining recipes, then ultimately with spices and herbs for the bake. I have it dialed in to the point where I get many compliments around the dinner table. So I just don’t see the down side to the way they taste, it’s not strong but very amenable to practically any recipe.
-environemtal foot print: compared to say beef, the impact of raising a pound of meat using the Cornish cross, approaches that of a vegetable, at least when compared to cattle, 2.5 lbs of grain to a lb of meat vs 18 lbs of grain to a pound of beef.
- Cobb 500 Cornish cross is the closest thing I’ve found to the perfect balance between liveliness, humaneness, and meat production. If you can accept the challenges, you can learn to make accommodations for the challenges: don’t use light for heat, use a radiant heat source so they actually sleep at night, giving their bones time to grow and keep up with the eye popping muscle growth, use nipple waterers and hanging feed and split them apart so the birds have to walk more as well as raise them as they birds grow so they have to stand to eat and drink.
-this process is so efficient I can justify the cost of organic grain, considering the boutique gourmet outcome.

CX have their eccentricities that require fine tuning of practices, but once it’s all dialed in, they offer an unparalleled opportunity for the back yard chickener.