Processing non-meat breed cockerels

[Tstraub]

That's what I'm aiming for, quick growth and a large size in 16 or 18 weeks. I have five New Hampshire pullets and one grew fast is is nearly twice as big as the others. She's been laying 5 or 6 x-large eggs per week. She bred with a good sized NH cockerel and I hatched 10 of her eggs.

I'll keep the fastest growing and largest of the ten for breeding the second generation. I have no experience either, but just using my judgement as to which ones to keep as breeding stock, and hopefully end up with a line of good dual purpose meat/egg birds.

That sounds like a solid plan to me. I’m sure the original people that developed the breed followed a similar plan. If you have a hen that lays a lot of eggs an is the size you want hatch her eggs eat the eggs of the ones that don’t preform as well.

I’m definitely putting table qualities first but still planning to keep an eye on SOP. I have zero plans to ever enter my birds in a show but one day I might sell hatching eggs or chicks and I want my line to look correct to breed standard.