Raising chicks for meat?

[yanks26]

1) What is the best type of bird for meat purposes?
2) How many weeks must you wait until they are worthy for the processing plant?

Does anyone else out there raise day-old chicks for meat?

 

[popcornpuppy]

I have heard that cornish are the best for meat. They grow fast, by the time they are 12 weeks old they are 8-9 lbs. A good size for dinner.
I personally raise Rhode Island Reds, and Barred Rocks for both meat and eggs. The red roos will get to be 7.5 lbs, the hens 6lbs, and the Rocks will be about a pound heavier than the reds. We cull the flock when the roos start crowing, we could wait till they got a little bigger, but the noise is too much for us. The hens get to lay for a year before we cull them.

 

[yanks26]

Quote:
When you say cull, do you mean send them to the meat processing plant? Or just get rid of them in another way?

 

[raspeary]

Cornish Rocks. They are specicfically meat birds and ready in 6-8 weeks.

Although some people wait a couple weeks longer. Depends on what you want for size.

i did 4 cornish rocks and my hubby and I butchered at 12 weeks. My birds girls were around 6 1/2 pounds and my roo was 8 pounds.


As for the taste, I'm sure they are good. I haven't cooked one yet.

 

[raspeary]

Quote:
When you say cull, do you mean send them to the meat processing plant? Or just get rid of them in another way?

by cull it means to butcher/kill

you can find a place to do it for you or you can butcher and gut yourself.

 

[jen5680]

Quote:
How old are they when you butcher? My BR are only like
4 to 4 1/2 months and I thought they needed to e bigger
before I could eat them. i am a "outlaw" and my neighbors
might call and get me in trouble so....

Thanks!

 

[kristen2678]

Have you checked out the meat birds message board?

 

[cw]

yes we raise day old chicks for meat
cornish x rock is by far the best way to go as far as feed to meat ratio
but there are many other edible breeds out there

 

[yanks26]

Quote:
How many do you raise?

 

[cw]

we raised 50 for our family of 5
here is the details
we raised them on local feed from a local mill and a homemade recipe
they are delicious we just put the roosters in the deep freezer as the hens need another week or 2
the regrets
to do it over again we would do them in groups of 15-25 though( buying them 50 at a time is cheeper) and doing them in large groups is more efficient
they need room or attention if raised in a pen ,( be ready to clean there pen,)
if you have 50 and are buying less then 200Lbs of feed you will find yourself running out as mine could eat 25-30 lbs a day
if you cant clean them yourselves i would not mess with it as the butcher will charge you to butcher them.
now the good stuff
worrying more about the quality of feed, then the protein % really paid off, (though at 6 weeks or so i posted about them being really small to only relize my youngest son had ruined our scale)
they had plenty of water, they did grow a little slower, but i did not lose a 1 to leg problems or heart attacks,(that means a lot to us) and the quality of the dressed bird was 1 i had never had before so to say if we would do it over again yes it was worth it, just do your homework cause if you aint carefull you will end up with less then store bought quality,
we got ours from meyer, but from what others say the hatchery really dont matter, just try to order from the one closest to u
if you have any other ?s please feel free to ask