Red rock cross or red sussex cross roosters?

[raroo]

I was wondering if anyone has raised red rock or red sussex cross roosters before as a meat bird. The hatchery where we got our birds from advertises them as a good dual purpose chicken and we are thinking about ordering some until we can hatch out our own meat birds from our White Rocks. Its only about $30 for 25 of the cockerel chicks.

I've read that a hybrid will grow faster than a purebred, does this apply to dual purpose crosses as well or only to the cornish crosses? Does anyone know if they will grow as big as White Rocks?

Does anyone know when they usually start crowing? My White Rocks started crowing at 12 weeks or so, its not so bad because we only have 9, but 25 roosters crowing would be overkill and we'd need to process them pretty much as soon as they start to crow. I'm wondering if that is too early to process.

Anyone have any opinions?

 

[miss_thenorth]

I'm confused about your talking about hatching out white rocks. My feed store calls our meat birds white rocks but most ppl here would call them cornish cross. (maybe it's different in Canada) In any event, they would grow too fast to be able to keep them long enough to get eggs from.

Anyways.... I just processed a couple of my barred rock cockerals today. Two were 4 months old--skinned, the two of them weighed 3 1/2 llbs. One cockeral was 6 months old, he just started crowing about a week ago. Skinned, he weighed 4 lbs. My former top roo, who was almost two years old, weighed in at 4 1/2 lbs. hope that helps.--they're not red rock, but they are barred rocks.

 

[raroo]

No, I really meant White Plymouth Rocks.

We have a flock of White Rock pullets and roos, and are planning on hatching our own for meat purposes. We are in the process right now of butchering our extra roosters. The pullets won't be ready to lay eggs for a couple months yet and we are wanting to raise more birds for meat while we are waiting. We like dual purpose birds.

The red rock or sussex cross roosters seemed like a good solution, I was just wondering if anyone knew how different if at all they were from a purebred dual purpose bird.

 

[Puck-Puck]

I cannot answer the question you asked, Raroo, and I know you're talking about roosters, not hens. BUT, if you decide to experiment with the dual purpose birds: I have noticed a difference in temperament and economy between the Red Sussex Cross hens (sweet birds!) and the Red Rock Cross hens: the latter eat double what the former do, but don't weigh any more. And they're very pecky with each other. If reduced to a choice between the two, I'd risk the Red Sussex roos, hoping they had the same nice temperament and efficiency (White Plymouth Rock on the mother's side) rather than Red Rock roos, (Barred Rock on the mother's side) lest they have the same undesirable traits as the hens.

 

[raroo]

Thanks so much puck-puck, that info is very helpful!

I was leaning toward the red sussex cross too, the hens sound good so hopefully the roosters will follow suit!

As far as crowing goes, we've decided that if we have to, we'll process most of them early if they turn out to be early crowers like my WR's, and then leave 10 or so to grow out for longer. (Since we have 9 roos all crowing right now and its not a problem.) That way we'll be sure we won't get any complaints from the neighbors.

We're going to go ahead and order them, I'm sure they will work out fine. We've got tons of room to make them a huge run and a large, good, insulated extra shed that we can easily convert to a coop.

 

[Puck-Puck]

I hope the hypothesis is right. Will you post the results after all's said, done, and eaten?

And, as a former Vancouverite, I'm curious to know which neighbourhood you live in, that nine crowing roosters raise no complaints. Southlands?

 

[raroo]

I live near Brookswood in Langley, in a country residential area. I use the term "Vancouver" loosely, maybe I should change it to "Greater Vancouver Area" in my avatar.

I will gladly post the results.

If we order the chicks this weekend we should get them no later than 5 weeks from now. (According to the hatchery.) LOL then another four or five months after that and I should have some results!

In the meantime, we're going to finish up processing the rest of our WR roosters, hopefully we'll get a couple more done this weekend. This time I'll take pics!

And share them here if anyone is interested. (Well, I'll share wether anyone is interested or not!

)

 

[Mrs Evans]

I just went in on an order of red rock roosters. The order was cancelled & they had to get rid of them. I don't really know much about this breed & if they aren"fast growing" meat birds? Kinda want to know so I could sell some if I need to.