Raising Meat Birds for Breeding

[Jmhayden23]

Hello!

I am fairly new to raising chickens. This will be our second year, but our first starting with chicks. We have decided to do meat birds, Freedom Rangers to be exact. They are about 3 weeks old now, but we separated one rooster and 5 hens at a couple days old. We want to keeps these birds as normal and brood eggs to hatch, so we can keep things going. I know with normal meat birds they are now on a 12 hour eating window. My concern is with the 6 birds we are keeping around, if I leave the food in there for 12 hours like the others they are going to eat themselves fat like the normal life cycle they are bred for. Does anyone know how much I should be feeding them daily to keep them around for a while? Am I even doing this right? Any input is appreciated!

 

[nuthatched]

I'm not familiar enough with this breed to say, but usually, If you intend to breed for an active supply, I'd get the birds that create the cross. Say, get a bunch of cornish (not cornish cross) hens and a Plymouth rock roo to breed cornish xs. I say think only because most meatbirds are crosses and I'm not sure the traits you want will continue down the line.

 

[Battlepants]

So, unfortunately, they might not be worth keeping as a breeding set. Freedom Rangers are a hybrid of Red Rangers and Black Rangers with that specific setup. If you breed a Freedom Ranger with another Freedom Ranger, you will muddy the genetic line and not get the same growing power of a real Freedom Ranger. It's the same issue that's stopping most of us from trying to breed our own Cornish X - we don't have the upstream genetic linage to create a proper Cornish X, nor will two Cornish Xs create a proper Cornish X downstream. So instead we buy our "premade" chicks from factory farms that spent a huge amount of time and money to build their lines.

Ultimately, the question in my eyes comes to - is it better to buy new chicks every time, or to spend extra feed/energy to raise sub-par meat birds?
*That's not to say that all birds you will breed will be bad, it's just that they will not be able to come anywhere close to Cornish X in terms of meat production.

 

[My Bagurks]

BattlePants is correct. The meat birds you have are already crossed. The meat birds we are all used to buying and processing are crosses of two (pure or specifically bred) breeds. They themselves will live normal lives and breed, but the crosses will not or most likely will not. Crosses usualy get Hybrid Vigor, just meaning they grow even faster than either parent normally would.
If you want to hatch meat birds, you need the same parents as a breeder uses. When you talk about the famous Cornish crosses, a lot of those birds genetics are almost trade secrets. It’s not just a Cornish and a rock, it’s THEIR Cornish and rock. BUT you can probably be very successful if you got two breeds that make a good meat bird. But it will be very difficult to breed your own broiler that’s ready for the freezer at 8 weeks like the meat birds you order.

I know a lot of people that breed jersey giants with other common breeds that make great meat birds. And they always have the option of keeping them as layers. They just take longer to reach butchering age.

Now. If you are dead set on keeping those you have and see what they can do, you need lower protein feed. (Lower than meat bird). So your every day 16 or 18% chick starter will be fine. Raise them like a layer. But keep in mind, those crosses are prone to health issues that they typically don’t live long enough to have.

I wish you luck whichever route you take. And if you find that those meat birds grow and breed well, let us all know. A sustainable meat bird source is an amazing thing.

 

[Jmhayden23]

Thanks for the help! I think we are just going to scratch the idea of trying to breed the Rangers. I guess now it just depends on how we want to go about this, because we have about 15 laying hens with a few roosters. 11 Brown Novogen layers with three roosters and a few Austrolorps left over from last year. It would be sometime in august after the rangers are butchered before we would need anymore meat birds.

 

[Battlepants]

Looks like Brown Novogen are laying specialized, but Austrolorps are considered dual purpose. Not sure if you have a roo/hen combo in your Australorp cluster, but that might be a decent path to go for breeding out and harvesting the offspring.

Another thing that might be worth reviewing is the Bresse chickens. A buddy of mine is currently raising those as sustainable meat and is planning on passing over some chicks for me to raise over here. Definitely a slowly growing bird, but their offspring are still Bresse, and I hear their meat tastes amazing - something like the fat marbling found in cows, but in a chicken instead.

 

[Geena]

Thanks for the help! I think we are just going to scratch the idea of trying to breed the Rangers. I guess now it just depends on how we want to go about this, because we have about 15 laying hens with a few roosters. 11 Brown Novogen layers with three roosters and a few Austrolorps left over from last year. It would be sometime in august after the rangers are butchered before we would need anymore meat birds.

You don't need to scratch the idea of breeding your Rangers. We've been breeding our own meat birds for about 6 years now and are very happy with them. Just because they are a hybrid doesn't mean they won't produce nice meat birds for you. The offspring may not be exactly like the parent stock, but they will be very close, the genetics are there.

A couple of things I've learned -
Don't pick the largest ones to keep back for breeding as you will most likely encounter mobility problems with them. Go for the small to med sized ones and keep them on a restricted diet.
Plan on cycling your breeders out every year, or two at the most, as these big birds are not prolific in the long term.
It cost a lot to feed the breeding stock throughout the year, so although it is sustainable, it's not necessarily more cost effective than buying chicks each spring.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

You don't need to scratch the idea of breeding your Rangers. We've been breeding our own meat birds for about 6 years now and are very happy with them. Just because they are a hybrid doesn't mean they won't produce nice meat birds for you. The offspring may not be exactly like the parent stock, but they will be very close, the genetics are there.

A couple of things I've learned -
Don't pick the largest ones to keep back for breeding as you will most likely encounter mobility problems with them. Go for the small to med sized ones and keep them on a restricted diet.
Plan on cycling your breeders out every year, or two at the most, as these big birds are not prolific in the long term.
It cost a lot to feed the breeding stock throughout the year, so although it is sustainable, it's not necessarily more cost effective than buying chicks each spring.

I want to both "love" and "informative" that post. Settled for "informative", "love" isn't really my vibe.

In any event, @Jmhayden23 , there's no reason you can't breed the birds you want to eat, and eat the birds you don't, even though the end result will not be a "breed", or even a recognized hybrid. Its what I'm doing in an effort to eventually develop a bird well suited to my climate, my soil conditions, my needs, and my management style.

Do be aware that its not a fast process, and an often dissatisfying process - BYC is littered with abandoned Breeding Project threads. Part of why mostr consumers buy breeds in the first place, someone else has already invested the time and effort.

Even breeding your own, margins remain very close. Most likely to improve margins by finding a better feed supply and/or enhancing your grounds than by raising your own - unless you eventually plan to sell your creations to others, but that's a long time horizon plan. It would be different if you were raising rare birds that commanded a price premium, but that's not the case with Rangers, and even less the case with CX - even if either did breed true - those are scales of efficiency we can't hope to compete at.

 

[Jmhayden23]

Looks like Brown Novogen are laying specialized, but Austrolorps are considered dual purpose. Not sure if you have a roo/hen combo in your Australorp cluster, but that might be a decent path to go for breeding out and harvesting the offspring.

Another thing that might be worth reviewing is the Bresse chickens. A buddy of mine is currently raising those as sustainable meat and is planning on passing over some chicks for me to raise over here. Definitely a slowly growing bird, but their offspring are still Bresse, and I hear their meat tastes amazing - something like the fat marbling found in cows, but in a chicken instead.

Yes, the plan was to have some strictly layers and then separate meat birds. The Australorps were given to us and unfortunately we only have 4 hens. Any suggestions on a good rooster to maybe breed them with for meat? They are just about two years old at this point.

 

[Jmhayden23]

You don't need to scratch the idea of breeding your Rangers. We've been breeding our own meat birds for about 6 years now and are very happy with them. Just because they are a hybrid doesn't mean they won't produce nice meat birds for you. The offspring may not be exactly like the parent stock, but they will be very close, the genetics are there.

A couple of things I've learned -
Don't pick the largest ones to keep back for breeding as you will most likely encounter mobility problems with them. Go for the small to med sized ones and keep them on a restricted diet.
Plan on cycling your breeders out every year, or two at the most, as these big birds are not prolific in the long term.
It cost a lot to feed the breeding stock throughout the year, so although it is sustainable, it's not necessarily more cost effective than buying chicks each spring.

Thanks for that! Maybe it wouldn’t be bad to try it out, at this point we’re open to whatever. It might make more sense for us to keep cycling meat birds every year then doing a dual purpose bird.