Mixed up chicken breeds - Mutt chickens

[chickencrazylady]

Okay, this is kinds strange, but I have a White Silkie Roo, the 9 girls I have are 2 frizzle, 1 American game, and 6 mixed or mutt chickens, anyone's guess. I don't currently have the room to expand my coop to be able to get a 2nd roo. I am going to hatch chicks this coming spring, hopefully my Silkie and Frizzle hens to get Sizzle chicks, don't know about the others yet.

I don't know anything about meat birds at this point, and would like to be able to get some to go to freezer camp in the fall.
My main problem with freezer camp is I do get attached to my chickens, feeding, watering, collecting eggs, cleaning out the coop, and just sitting in the run and watching their chicken antics. Always too funny!!

My dh says, there your birds so you decide how to handle them!!! He was nice enough to help dispatch my 2 roo's I got and thought they were hens. Magoo and Hawkeye RIP!

Chickens it seems up here (Northern Alberta, Canada) are only for 2 purposes, eggs or meat.

 

[CluckyJay]

You could get some of those Cornish cross. They grow so quickly you might not get attached. One way to not get attached is to just go in, clean and feed really fast and then get out. Just check them to make sure they're growing and not getting sick. That and they will die if they live too long so you'd HAVE to kill them.

They'd need their own pen for that though.

 

[MakNat]

Thats what we do. I have my fun barn yard cross flock for eggs, pets, company, fertilizer, bug control and eye candy. I let them do their thing and raise their very mutt' but DARLING babies. Once the roo chicks get old enough to piss the main roos off and harrass the hens they go to freezer camp. But at that point it doesn't hurt our feelings. They are disrupting the flock.

For the main 'meat' birds, we order the cornish rock chicks. They are cheap, easy to raise, grow ultra fast and yes Clucky Jay is right. They are just miserable if you keep them too long. Plus they all look exactly the same.... But it would be better to have a seperate coop for them. But we are talking as little as 7 wks til butcher.

 

[LBejaran]

This kind of thing gets to me, too. Having a little mutt flock is great and then you realize, "Crud, now I want meat chickens, but I love them all!"

Which is why mutt flocks are so easy. No worries about proper breeding, no need to have a specific breed for a specific thing. It's great, until you want to expand the use of your flock.

Like MakNat says, I think having a separate coop would be a good idea if you want meat birds. Of course, you could always buy some super cheap cockerels off someone on Craigslist and you wouldn't feel a personal attachment to them, but you may want to raise them yourself either way. Sometimes, being involved in the raising and processing of a bird feels better than taking it off someone's hands just to send it to your freezer.

There are some alternative, though, if you are worried about space. Quail are a great bird that are mature in 6 weeks. They produce really good eggs that have amazing health benefits raw (and they don't carry dangerous things like Salmonella, so you can eat them raw and not get sick!). They are good for skin, hair, men's health, digestive health, etc. And you only need one or two males for breeding! Your females will lay loads of eggs and you can have tiny little meat birds that are much easier to process than chickens. It's more economical, in a sense. Any excess males can be sent off to the freezer. Plus, they don't really eat that much, nor do they need that much space. I have a few and already they are pretty substantial in size (though, only about 5 oz after processing). They just turned 6 this Sunday. I think they'll be laying eggs soon. I just put up additional lighting, though, because they weren't getting any direct light for awhile.