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dheltzel said:
Our Midget White tom died today  :hit
We miss him so much, and I think his hens do too. He was sick the last few weeks and I'd been trying different meds and the last one seemed to work, he was strutting and gobbling in Sat, but dead Monday morning.

I think we'll keep most of the 14 poults we have so far to raise up in memory of him.
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So sorry for your lost Tom. Hope you get some nice babies from him.

wingstone said:
PROBLEM       PROBLEM       PROBLEM

I have no empty cage so I brought a child's swimming pool inside, how long do you think this will hold ducks ???

and my strange hubby just told me to set it up in the living room...his reasoning is, If I am gonna run the electric bill with a heat lamp, why not put it in a room that we are using.....
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Doesn't sound like a problem, if they start to jump out, you know it's time to fill up the pool with water and have a pond in the living room. :smack
 
wingstone said:
sorry, I have been out of Delaware for a few year's...they can be a nice breed but just a head's up...every rooster I had in the delaware breed got mean, maybe just my luck but something to watch for.

have you ever processed before, maybe a few cornishx are in order just to get going..
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We processed a couple young australorp Roos last fall. Hubs' friend showed us the ropes and actually convinced hubs to do meat birds with the promise of helping him convert our old, broken washer into a plucker. I did hear that about the Delaware roos, but I was also under the impression that Cornish roo over Delaware hen is the preferred cross, so we Are keeping ourselves open to just processing any young Delaware roos and sticking with Cornish Roos depending on the temperament that we see from them.

I also need to figure out timing... We'll be out of town for a week over Easter so I don't really want to deal with a bunch of extra birds that can't be outside when we're out of town, but if we do cx we can't wait too long because of summer heat. I think we're planning to breed the rabbits after this weekend too, so we'll have our first litter of bunnies right after we get back from Easter vacation... And my daughter's birthday party is the following Saturday. Crazy times and we need to figure out when to add meaties I to that schedule!
 
emorems0 said:
So I think I decided what I want to do for meaties... My long term plan is to get some delaware and some dark Cornish (or white Cornish, but I guess they aren't as winter hardy?). I'll put them in a separate pen from my layers and just let them reproduce and see what we get. I'll keep the best offspring from each hatch and process the rest. Eventually we should end up with some barnyard mix that is a pretty nice shaped bird and since Delaware and dark Cornish are both good eaters, the intermediate crosses should be decent too, right?

Short term for this season, I'm not sure... I guess depending on what we can find for the Cornish and Delaware we'll just start with those, but I doubt I'll be able to find them cheap enough to make buying 15 or so birds worth the cost. We may just buy 15 CornishX for this season and then add a just a pair each of Delaware and dark Cornish for the long term goal.

So... Anyone have any Delaware or standard Cornish or know where I can get some?
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Not Delawares, but I have heritage New Hampshires that get huge. I think Delawares may have been derived from NH's. I know they used to use NH"s in meat bird crosses before cornish x rocks took over. I wonder what a Cornish x NH would grow like.

I might also know where to get Cornish, may be red-laced rather than darks. They are show birds, so not sure how they would do for meat.

If you get no better leads and want to try these, let me know.

Edit: the NH roos are very nicely tempered, I can pick them up and hold them easily, even the free range ones are docile.
 
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dheltzel said:
Not Delawares, but I have heritage New Hampshires that get huge. I think Delawares may have been derived from NH's. I know they used to use NH"s in meat bird crosses before cornish x rocks took over. I wonder what a Cornish x NH would grow like.

I might also know where to get Cornish, may be red-laced rather than darks. They are show birds, so not sure how they would do for meat.

If you get no better leads and want to try these, let me know.

Edit: the NH roos are very nicely tempered, I can pick them up and hold them easily, even the free range ones are docile.
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Thanks, I'll definitely let you know if I don't come up with other leads. I've heard a lot of good things about New Hampshires... But I am hoping to end up with white-feathered crosses which is why I settled on the Delaware. I won't need show quality birds, I feel like I read that the SQ Cornish don't breed very well, but I could be wrong. I read some good things on BYC about S-and-S poultry having good, meaty Cornish but they seemed to have disappeared from BYC and the Internet last year so I don't know how to contact them or if they are still raising them.
 
wingstone said:
very proud of myself and self control.
needed to run to TSC for a heat lamp for the muscovy babies due to arrive tomorrow...
all the chicks and duck are on sale...meaties down to $1 duckies are down to 3.50...chicks all marked down but do not remember price...

now to my way of thinking....I am setting up the brooder anyway...but I resisted and bought only my light bulb
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Wow $1 for meaties. I wish I had some place to put them. I need more chicken meat for the freezer :(
 

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