Recommended Places To Buy Meat Birds

[SweetiePie12]

Hello everyone!

I've been butchering meat birds on and off for the past couple of years. My family and I will get meat birds from friends or we just buy a few from a chicken catalog and raise our own meat. One of our friends also will order turkeys every for us year so we can raise out own turkey for thanksgiving. My husband and I want to start raising meat birds and selling them for a bit off profit. We have a lot more time than usual on our hands so, we decided to start this fun project now. What we were wondering, does anyone recommend good websites we can order meat birds from? I've been doing some research and I found 2-3 sites that seem reliable with getting your chickens to you by mail. Of course, we know there will be some dead chicks that will come to us and, some could die after a few days of being with us. We want to make sure we are ordering from a reliable and good site.

Thank you very much for your help in advance, it means a lot!

 

[Molpet]

The hybrid meat bird don't breed true. You get a bunch of different sizes.
The CX have to be starved and exercise to keep them alive long enough to breed. The cockerels sometimes get too big of a breast to breed. Artificial insemination is an option.
I kept a CX pullet restricted diet and lots of exercise. She died before she started laying in the spring. Bred her to a mixed heritage roo and used the Cockerels over br and bjg. 3rd generation the cockerels dress out 5 to 7 lbs at 16 weeks.

 

[Compost King]

Hello everyone!

I've been butchering meat birds on and off for the past couple of years. My family and I will get meat birds from friends or we just buy a few from a chicken catalog and raise our own meat. One of our friends also will order turkeys every for us year so we can raise out own turkey for thanksgiving. My husband and I want to start raising meat birds and selling them for a bit off profit. We have a lot more time than usual on our hands so, we decided to start this fun project now. What we were wondering, does anyone recommend good websites we can order meat birds from? I've been doing some research and I found 2-3 sites that seem reliable with getting your chickens to you by mail. Of course, we know there will be some dead chicks that will come to us and, some could die after a few days of being with us. We want to make sure we are ordering from a reliable and good site.

Thank you very much for your help in advance, it means a lot!

Although I just settle for who ever has the cheapest I am told that hatcheries that specialize in meat birds tend to have better birds. I am raising meat birds from a regular hatchery now and some are huge and some are runts, and I am told that the the meat specific hatcheries do not have this issue. So even though I have never used them I recommend these 2 Hatcheries (both in Pennsylvania so I hope people share ones out west too)

https://www.moyerschicks.com/catalog/

https://www.freedomrangerhatchery.com

a good thread to read through about people discussing where they get their meat birds is here

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...ge-and-hybrids.1295366/page-202#post-23019940

everyone posting over there are friendly and helpful or they have been to me.

 

[iwltfum]

Although I just settle for who ever has the cheapest I am told that hatcheries that specialize in meat birds tend to have better birds. I am raising meat birds from a regular hatchery now and some are huge and some are runts, and I am told that the the meat specific hatcheries do not have this issue. So even though I have never used them I recommend these 2 Hatcheries (both in Pennsylvania so I hope people share ones out west too)

https://www.moyerschicks.com/catalog/

https://www.freedomrangerhatchery.com

a good thread to read through about people discussing where they get their meat birds is here

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...ge-and-hybrids.1295366/page-202#post-23019940

everyone posting over there are friendly and helpful or they have been to me.

I'll second the freedom ranger hatchery recommendation. We buy a couple hundred chicks every year from them and have for 4 or 5 seasons and they have great customer service and healthy chicks. I can count on one hand the number of dead-on-arrival chicks that I've received from them.

They do not sell cornishx chicks. They have exclusive US rights to a meat breed that conforms to the Label Rouge requirements, which is a strict French standard for poultry that requires ethically raised breeding stock and good animal husbandry- among other requirements. They grow about half as fast as cornishx do.

 

[Folly's place]

I also like the Freedom Ranger hatchery, nice birds, good service. The birds take longer to grow than the Cornishx chicks, but are healthier and more like 'normal' chickens, without the management issues that Cornishx birds need to survive. And they taste 'more like chicken'!
Mary