Pro's and Con's, Breed Choice

[Natalijaasbj]

I am sorry if my questions are a little naive. I just recently started doing heritage birds for meat for my family. So far I was really happy with the whole thing. I do have to admit I did not yet tried any young birds for grilling. I will try one in a month. But what is really interesting for me, is do FR really taste MUCH better than Costco organic, because we are a small family and can afford a Costco 2.00$ chicken if we really need grilling, or roasting or frying.
I just do not want to do some FR - because it is a lot of work and money and hassle involved, and if I only will save 80 cents or so per pound.
That is why it is interesting for me how MUCH more delicious they are compared to organic ones(I am not really liking the organic store bought ones so much BTW), then I might try to give it a try next spring just for grilling dishes for my family.
Thank you for any input.

 

[SunnySkies]

Sunnyskies!
Are the FREEDOM RANGERS  are SO MUCH MORE DELICIOUS  than Costco organic birds (with no feeding them and sheltering and raising)?
 I just get curious - if they are SO  superior then it might be worth the effort. But if not - why bother? Thank you for all that you share here.

Oh yes. Much better. Anything you raise, even if you raise CX, will be better. I thnk mine even taste better than the chickens the local farm store sells.... They are raised outside but not free ranging, just in a tractor. Mine get to live a chicken life then have one bad minute.

ETA: I did not feel like they were a lot of work. 5 minutes to feed and water and open the coop in the morning. 10 minutes to move the coop, water and pick up feed at night. Done. Plan your raising when you'd be butchering a few Roos anyway and process all at once. The biggest hassle was going to buy feed every week because I kept miscalculating how many bags I needed every week. I liked the shrink bags you can buy online.

There is just something very rewarding about feeding my family meat I know where it came from, how it was fed and how it lived. We don't buy store meat any longer. It is safer too...when the government was closed, I didn't worry about my chicken, as I knew it wasn't recalled

 

[SunnySkies]

I really need to butcher them.  They are housed with my American Bresse because they grew up together, and will be 30 weeks old this week.  Somehow I don't think I want to breed them to my Bresse.....but I sure dread catching them because my roo is very protective.....safety glasses, long sleeves, gloves, etc will be the attire for that adventure

Oh yikes!

I have heard the AB are excellent eating too. Is this the case?

 

[BCMaraniac]

Oh yikes!

I have heard the AB are excellent eating too. Is this the case?

I have only had capon slips, and they were excellent! They were extras that were caponized out of straight run chicks I got for breeding stock.

I look forward to raising AB chicks of my own for meat, along with my BCM's. I might even cross the two to see what happens.....

 

[Natalijaasbj]

Thank you, Sunnyskies, for sharing about FR - good info!
I know that a very respectable man in "chicken" society Harvey Ussery does recommend to do FR instead of CX.
Though I heard there are tricks to do Heritage birds for grilling as well, that there is not such a thing as tough chicken, but improperly cooked chicken . I have to research before I do grilling of the DP and will try to do it using the advise of the Heritage chicken fans.
As for hybrid birds - sounds good about the quick growth, not so good in procreation department, and Just the idea of having a bird dying on me because I do not harvest it on time is not very appealing to me for now:/
And also a young bird will probably always have this "young" taste to it. Complex taste takes time to develop IMHO.
I guess all of us have their preferences in how they do things, raising chickens

 

[SunnySkies]

I have never had an adult heritage bird cooked to a way I like, even by Michelin star chefs, unless they do it low and slow. I personally don't think it can be done. The muscle fibers themselves are different. They taste good if cooked properly, but hot and fast isn't the way to cook them :shrug My mom tried and tried....she got soooo tired of cull chickens for dinner and having to crockpot or soup them....but never succeeded. I have tried too, and many people here have tried, and nobody ever really succeeds.

I'll eat my culls, but only as soup, chicken and dumplings, chicken enchiladas, chicken something, but I'm not going to try to roast, grill or fry an older bird ever again. They just don't work for that.

Someone else mentioned canning older birds, and that is a definite idea. You would need a pressure canner to do it safely, but the ease factor makes that appeal to me. Pop open a jar of chicken and have chicken a la king in 10 minutes...yum.

 

[LilyD]

I have been raising DP Heritage birds and have also done Cornish Cross and Freedom Rangers. My opinion is that out of all of them I like the Heritage DP breeds the best. I raise Silver Gray Dorking, Australorp, and Brahmas for my meat birds so the ones I get each year may be purebreds or they may be any combination of the above breeds. I keep my Brahmas in one coop with two Brahma roosters, and keep the Dorkings and Australorps in another with two Dorking roosters. They are primarily what we eat here.

The Cornish Cross we raised were better than store bought definitely but I agree with the OP and others who have stated the meat was bland and soft. I also didn't like raising them as they ate and ate and when they ran out of food they would break out of their pen and go after the layers foods or the eggs or anything else that wasn't nailed down. I guess this means they are good foragers but they don't forage like my layers do.

The Freedom Rangers grow a little slower and taste about the same as the Cornish Cross do but I had the same problems with them as I do with the Cornish Cross. They would eat all the food and then go after anything that wasn't locked up. So eggs, chicks, human legs were all easy targets. Others have said that they are friendly and easy going. That wasn't my experience. They were free range from the time they were large enough that my other chickens wouldn't kill them so it wasn't that I was keeping them penned up or not giving them enough. I was going through a 50lb bag of food every 2 days if not more.

The Heritage birds are much calmer in my opinion. I can run the ones I am going to be eating right with my layers and they are mellow and easy going. They have access to fruit trees as well as bugs and pastures for grains and grasses and they go out in the morning and always come back with their crops full (and I still get eggs). As far as cooking the heritage birds. I have roasted, grilled, slow cooked, fried etc all my birds (up to 6 months for roasting frying or grilling, up to 2 years for crock pot so far) with no problems. On my grill I do indirect heat so I turn on a burner to the side of the bird and the bird sits out of the direct heat but still gets browned up nicely. Fried chicken I usually brine or soak in milk or yogurt before adding the coating and frying. So far I have not had a tough meal from this. Roasting is lower temp than store bought birds like 275-300 in a closed dutch oven usually with veggies in the bottom and a little fluid of some kind. Skin gets crispy and it tastes wonderful.

It is definitely different cooking Heritage birds than cooking store bought or cornish cross birds. I agree with Natali that you definitely need to look into how to do it before you give it a try. I am not saying that I doubt what others are saying I can only tell you what I have experienced so far with the birds I have had. Maybe it's the breeds I am using or how I prep them ahead of time, I am not sure but so far I have had no complaints from the family that their meat has been tough, bad tasting or inedible in any way.

 

[SunnySkies]

Funny...I've done all that, and my heritage birds just are not tender and juicy like the FR birds are without all that extra work to prepare them. I can literally pull a FR out of the freezer, thaw it and cook it however I like without brining, dunking in buttermilk, etc. I've cooked for over 30 years and so far, my home raised FR beat anything I've ever tried as far as chicken goes.

Your FR experience was nothing like mine. I liked mine...calm, gentle. I was kinda bummed to have to process them as they were nicer than my Australorpes, Marans, SFH and barnyard mixes. But mine did free range and did not have a pen. They had their own pasture and I had no trouble with them. The roosters didn't fight among themselves or with visiting free range roosters from the layer flocks. I still have two pullets from that lot, and they are perfectly gentle and very tame.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

 

[LilyD]

SunnySkies ~

I did free range mine. I don't have a ton of land but I have 2 acres and they have access to all but where my house is and where my driveway is. The whole area is fenced in to keep the predators out but they had plenty of room. Once they started getting agressive I penned them in a pen that was 50 feet by 100 feet and they started attacking each other and starting to breed with each other. I lost a few roosters and pullets because of back and neck injuries that I had to cull early on. Even penning them for the last few weeks they still would get out by scaling the fence (regular field fencing 4 ft tall) to get out. Then they would eat whatever feed was in the coops as well as the eggs and chase my regular layer hens around the yard. Maybe it was where I got them from but even as little chicks they seemed much bolder than other chicks and would come right up and attack my hand in the coop. Maybe a bad batch who knows.

I read a great guide that was posted here a while back on cooking heritage birds Rediscovering Traditional Meats from Historic Chicken Breeds which talks about the ages to cook chickens for different purposes:

"There are 4 traditional chicken meat classes: broiler, fryer, roaster and fowl. The traditional broiler age
range was from 7 to 12 weeks, and carcass weight from
1 to 2 1/2 lbs. (Squab broilers would be youngest and
smallest of these, typically Leghorn cockerels about
3/4 to 1 pound dressed.) The next age and weight group
was called the fryer. Traditional fryer age range was from
14 to 20 weeks, and carcass weight from 2 1/2 to 4
lbs. Traditional roaster age range was from 5 to 12 months, and carcass weight from 4 to 8 pounds. Most
roasters were butchered between 6 and 9 months. Hens and roosters 12 months and older were called “fowl” or
“stewing fowl” signifying that slow
moist cooking methods were required"

Basically the gist is that you harvest at different ages to get chickens to suit your needs. I have seen people cook these on a grill at fairs and functions by splitting the bird in half and grilling the whole bird on the grill fairly quickly. 1/2 a bird at a young age would be enough for one person. I have tried 12 week this way and it tastes great. I also have a rotisserie on my grill which bastes the birds in their own juices and the meat comes out very tender. I usually harvest between 20 and 24 weeks for most of my birds and they are good for just about anything I want to use it for. I don't mind doing the extra stuff when I cook and I would do it even with FR or CRX birds since in my opinion it makes the birds taste better.

 

[BCMaraniac]

BCMaraniac!
I found even better recipe that Coq a vin for the older roo, once I ate it it was the best I have ever tried. I am very bad with pasting links. so I will tell you just what to google - "Sticky chicken in the Crock Pot" on the "newlyweds-blog". This is my secret recipe, but I thought I will share my secret here with you

Natali,

I have a Sticky Chicken in my crock pot. It smells really good, and I am going to be smelling it all night, then cooling it and using at lunch tomorrow.

He is one of my Blue Copper Marans that I butchered a couple of weeks ago. I am really looking forward to it.