Meat Birds and Egg laying...

[Kris5902]

Cornish cross birds are same everywhere. They do nothing but sit and eat. Generally I am not a very emotional person, people say I am very practical, but hearing a large birds chirping like chicks always gets me.
One day I was selling a batch of CX to our local butcher and I saw one of my hens running around with her chicks of exact same age as CX batch tagged behind her and it was really disturbing.

We still don't have the Red Rangers in our country, but anyway I hope you will keep me updated with your experiment.

That’s different... my rangers started crowing at 8-9 weeks, but the CX make more of a honking noise my sole female ranger is mostly quiet. I’ve read that it is harder to get some heritage breeds in India, like the RIR. It’s good that you’re keeping your breeding stock pure then, and I can totally see how caponizing would be necessary in that sort of situation. I am using chicken tractors for breeding pens to isolate the parents, but in a free range setting I can see how things could quickly spiral out of control.

What sort of breeds do you have and focus on? I’m always interested in farming methods in other countries, as so much of the poultry industry in North America is controlled by giant corporations that don’t really care about the animals, just the profit margins and staying just within the bare minimum society will tolerate For “humane” conditions.

 

[Kabootar]

wow!! im not as familiar with them. How do they taste? Do you mix them in with your laying hens? Do they get along in mixed flocks? I know like ducks and such can be mixed in with chickens. Not sure about quail.
Yeah, i mean, like i said in my post, ive eaten DP birds before and im not honestly sure i like the taste. Like im not sure i care to raise them for meat, see what im saying? Thats why i was asking about Cornish X because theyre supposed to be more or less "grocery store" tasting. Not that i need an exact replica or anything. Just want something i can enjoy the taste. Figure that seems reasonable enough.
Heres another idea: was thinking about getting straight run of mixed DP breeds and seeing if i like the meat taste on any other DP breeds. Like barred rock, NH red, etc... Having like 10 different DP breeds then culling at a decent size and choosing which taste i like better......

I see what you are going through. From the time I have spent here on BYC I have come to understand that my fellow chicken keepers in the State have a ROOSTER problem. They don't know what to do with those freeloading gangs of rambunctious cockerels who show up every spring and who taste like garbage.

No matter how much you cull, a rooster is gonna taste like a Rooster that is tough, chewy and stringy. What my family calls ''a sad meal'' The male hormone testosterone makes the meat less desirable. That's why people castrate their calves, lambs, baby goats and piglets. A steer's, wether's and a barrow's meat is always superior to that of their intact counterparts.

The castrated male animals also create less problems on the farm and pose less danger to their handlers and to each other. They also don't overbreed the females. If you let a gang of hormonal roosters overtake you are going to have hens with bloody bloody heads, bald backs and a lots of injured roosters. The flock will look like they have come out of a tornado.

The best way to deal with this problem is to caponize your extra cockerels. They will be mellower than a hen, peaceful like a nun and kind enough to brood the chicks.

Capons are plump like a mellon and their meat is tender like a mother's love. It is juicy, moist and full of flavours. You don't need to process them in mass and care about maintaining a freezer like Cornish cross. They live as long as a normal chicken.

Here is a pic of my RIR capon

Note: Nothing I said is an exaggeration.

 

[Kris5902]

Well, there was a lady on the caponizing thread, she had a CX hen that lived for years and laid super large eggs.View attachment 1886361 View attachment 1886362

Not disputing the possibility of doing it... that is why I traded large 3 Red Ranger birds Dressed out for 3 CX pullets...I’m hoping I can incorporate them into a meat bird breeding program... I’m quite happy that 3 made it to 20 weeks and thus far only one has succumbed to leg problems.