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First, welcome to the group!
Sounds like you will soon have your hands very full of little fuzzy cuties
You mentioned in the post above that you were going to divide your space for roos/pullets. You don't really need to separate the boys from the girls (rooster & cockerel are terms for males; pullet & hen refer to females of different ages), but maybe you meant you would separate the meat birds from the laying breeds. That is what we have done, and it has worked really well and allows us to feed different protein % feed to them. We also ordered from Murray McMurray Hatchery and were very happy with our healthy little babies. Our first order was 12 RIR females, + 3 RIR males (knowing we would only keep 1 roo) and 15 Jumbo Cornish X Rock males.
We decided to go with a pure RIR laying flock. I have been thrilled with my ladies! I have 12 layers (8 mo old now) and I typically get 10-12 eggs per day; we sell the extra at our workplaces, and give some to friends/family. They have been laying very consistently since 19 weeks.
The Jumbo Cornish X Rock meat birds are freakishly focused on FOOD, and will run over anything and each other to get to it. If you had smaller breed chicks in with this variety, they'd likely be trampled or starve nearly to death. (My second order of 30 Jumbo Cornish X Rock chicks included the 'rare' chick, which could barely get a nibble!) However, if you have room to separate them from the others so you can control their protein % and quantity of food, they are *excellent* for meat purposes! We have been very happy with the final product; though a bit repulsed by raising them, too. They are focused on EATING and not much else; they do not waste any time scratching or turning over their bedding or doing anything that a nice, normal flock would do. They get so large so fast that they can hardly walk (they definitely waddle).
I don't have any problems with processing the meat birds or extra roos, as I was raised on a farm (though it took me over 20 years to get back to one!). Some people just can't do it, and that's OK, too. If you end up with some roos that you can't bear to process and need to instead give away, you can post here, put an ad at your local feed store, Craigslist, etc. My dear sweet husband built a motorized chicken plucker for me for my Christmas present (no joke -- I am positive that I married the most wonderful man in the world!!!). As we processed over 20 birds on our last processing day (and I'm the plucker), our motorized plucker was awesome! Now that my plucking effort is decreased, I'm sure I'll learn the actual dressing out in order to speed up our processing time.
Sorry for the lengthy reply to your post, and welcome aboard! There is a lot of valuable information here; don't be afraid to ask questions and use the 'search' tool, too. Good luck to you and have lots of fun with your babies!
Hi to all the Oregon peeps!
