Self Sustainable Flock?

[WallacetheKhakiCampbell]

As others have said it’s a trade off. The only real meat birds that will give you a dressed chicken that looks like store bought is the Cornish cross.
leghorns and most ornamental types will have less usable meat than a jumbo quail.
but any of the heavy breeds will give you a usable carcass. But most, like the Orpington, Wyandot, and so on will give you a fair amount of meat as adults. But expect them to be stronger tasting and tougher than you are used to.
I grew up on dual purpose birds, we never bought meat, only ate what we raised. So to me that’s what chicken is supposed to taste like.
it will also take three times as long to get to a good weight for meat. But they eat far less so again, a trade off.
as far as a broody hen I’d suggest a game type, silkies or a heritage type bird. Although I’ve had wonderful luck with my partridge Cochins.

Thank you! This, along with some other comments are making me lean towards some sort of orpington or wyandotte (maybe a mix). I do love the taste of chicken, I can't imagine more of that flavor could be that bad, right?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'm using an incubator now, with high fail rates, still dialing things in. Your plan should anticipate very high losses early on, and moderate losses once you have the kinks out. We had 100% loss on our first five duck eggs, and the incubator was tied up for a month.

Started 12 chicken eggs after that. Two discarded, infertile. A handful showed some development, but the shell is so dark I can't see movement, so *fingers crossed*. Two lighter shells, definite movement. I'm just over two weeks in on a 3+ week commitment and already looking at 84% success best case. Power outages, big humidity swings from weather changes, there's all sorts of things can go wrong.

its not a panacea either.

Breeding is serious business. You can do it that way (if you have the space, time, and resources). If you don't, best you can hope for is selective culling - that's what I'm doing. Slower, less control, but I don't need as much breeding stock, or to keep my breeds all separated, introducing and removing roosters as needed. Eventually, you can wind up with a flock well suited to your needs - but you won't be selling them on Craigslist for anything like what a breeder can get for a pure bird, and you won't be winning any 4H and County Faire Trophies you can show off to prospective purchasers.

Not to dissuade you, just to prepare you for heartbreaks and encourage you to be flexible.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Thank you! This, along with some other comments are making me lean towards some sort of orpington or wyandotte (maybe a mix). I do love the taste of chicken, I can't imagine more of that flavor could be that bad, right?

My young but older (4-6 month) birds are leaner than what you get at the grocery, and taste more like turkey than chicken, if that helps you imagine in what direction the flavors tend to trend. They have to be cooked till a bit more done - a full 175, not 165 and carry over - with slower, wet, methods to develop any illusion of tenderness.

 

[NatJ]

Another thought: your broodies, your laying hens, and the breeders for your meat birds do not all have to be the same chickens.

You could, for example, keep silkies as broodies-- small birds, small appetites, few eggs but frequently broody. Then you give them the eggs you want hatched, instead of letting them hatch their own eggs.

And you could keep one of the dual purpose breeds for eggs and meat (Rocks, Wyandottes, Orpingtons, etc) for eggs and meat. Those lay brown eggs.

You could even add a few hens just for their laying abilities-- Leghorns lay well, and because their eggs are white it would be easy to tell them apart from the brown eggs, so you only hatch eggs of the kind you want. Blue or green layers would have eggs that are just as easy to tell apart, but they tend not to lay as well, so they're more of a novelty.

If the only rooster was a dual-purpose type, and if you only hatched brown eggs, then all chicks should be dual-purpose types as well.

 

[WallacetheKhakiCampbell]

I'm using an incubator now, with high fail rates, still dialing things in. Your plan should anticipate very high losses early on, and moderate losses once you have the kinks out. We had 100% loss on our first five duck eggs, and the incubator was tied up for a month.

Started 12 chicken eggs after that. Two discarded, infertile. A handful showed some development, but the shell is so dark I can't see movement, so *fingers crossed*. Two lighter shells, definite movement. I'm just over two weeks in on a 3+ week commitment and already looking at 84% success best case. Power outages, big humidity swings from weather changes, there's all sorts of things can go wrong.

its not a panacea either.

Breeding is serious business. You can do it that way (if you have the space, time, and resources). If you don't, best you can hope for is selective culling - that's what I'm doing. Slower, less control, but I don't need as much breeding stock, or to keep my breeds all separated, introducing and removing roosters as needed. Eventually, you can wind up with a flock well suited to your needs - but you won't be selling them on Craigslist for anything like what a breeder can get for a pure bird, and you won't be winning any 4H and County Faire Trophies you can show off to prospective purchasers.

Not to dissuade you, just to prepare you for heartbreaks and encourage you to be flexible.

Thank you I will make sure to keep this in mind

 

[WallacetheKhakiCampbell]

Another thought: your broodies, your laying hens, and the breeders for your meat birds do not all have to be the same chickens.

You could, for example, keep silkies as broodies-- small birds, small appetites, few eggs but frequently broody. Then you give them the eggs you want hatched, instead of letting them hatch their own eggs.

And you could keep one of the dual purpose breeds for eggs and meat (Rocks, Wyandottes, Orpingtons, etc) for eggs and meat. Those lay brown eggs.

You could even add a few hens just for their laying abilities-- Leghorns lay well, and because their eggs are white it would be easy to tell them apart from the brown eggs, so you only hatch eggs of the kind you want. Blue or green layers would have eggs that are just as easy to tell apart, but they tend not to lay as well, so they're more of a novelty.

If the only rooster was a dual-purpose type, and if you only hatched brown eggs, then all chicks should be dual-purpose types as well.

Thank you!

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Breeder stock dual purpose are broody. Hatchery birds are not usually broody. Breeder stock birds are more suited to meat production. Hatchery "breeds" are bred to lay more eggs. This results in an egg laying body type that is not to the breeds standard and not the wide body suited to fleshing. The source of birds is night and day different in body type, size, maturity rate and brooding tendency.

That said, for feed efficiency, tenderness of early age butchering and so forth there is no competition with CornishX. If your in a hotter climate the red or black slower growing broilers might be a better option. CornishX do not do well in heat. Using broilers for meat is economical and sustainable in respect that you'll never not be able to order chicks.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

CornishX can do just fine in heat. I'm in N FL, and surrounded by commercial chicken farms. It won't kill them.

But you do have to give some real thought to coop and run design.

/edit

Rather than be vague about it, I'll offer details. The commercial operations around me use glorified quonset huts with big fans on the ends to force air flow. Even then, when advertising for employees, they talk about a need to wear protective gear and respirators for hours on end in very high humidity environments at temps above 110 degrees.

Backyard flocks don't keep so many chickens, or so close together. Our temps and humidity should be much lower, not greater than ambient air (which likely doesn't exceed 100 degrees). That means coops with tons of ventilation, passive ventilation designs for still air days, loads of shade, high roofs (when possible), and giving your CornishX access to shaded soil. Why soil? Because they will dig down just an inch or two and settle their bodies into the hollow - that shaded soil is likely several degrees below the ambient air temp. I built a two story coop, such that the roof shades and protects the interior, whose floor is three feet above the ground - ground which is substantially always in the shade. High air flow at the bottom keeps the humidity down, a central shat allows warm air to escape upwards, and during hot days, almost the whole of the flock will bed down there, under the coop.

After that, their are higher effort insurance practices - electrolytes, ice blocks in their waterers, etc. Watch your birds, they will communicate via their behaviors when something is wrong.

/end edit

 

[Kris5902]

Thank you! This, along with some other comments are making me lean towards some sort of orpington or wyandotte (maybe a mix). I do love the taste of chicken, I can't imagine more of that flavor could be that bad, right?

There is a huge difference in flavor of even pasture raised or free range CX and Ranger Birds when compared to most store bought chicken. Dual purpose or laying cockerel culls taste entirely different from what you’re probably thinking when you say “chicken flavor”, but they make awesome stock, sausage, soup, and pot pies. And they are very skinny.

I have similar goals but with a small business in mind. I wanted to start with some heritage meat breeds (Bresse) and Rangers to cross for a more Sustainable, but still marketable, meat bird. So far pasture raising Rangers has been profitable, but my breeding attempts have yet to bear any fruit. I haven’t been able to hatch a single egg from the hold backs. I actually saw almost no difference between my first batch of Rangers and some CX that were raised from the same chick order. Except my losses were much lower, I was also told they had to “go longer” and ended up with 5.5-7lb birds at 12-14 weeks (have to double check my dates, to be sure) because I couldn’t move up my slaughter date. My next two orders of Rander type birds from a different Hatcher did take longer to size up, with a more noticeable difference between the pullets and cockerels in growth rate.

I also wasn’t able to source the Bresse or a similar heritage meat breed in time. So although my local sales of meat birds have gone very well, the sustainable factor is much harder to achieve. I prefer the Rangers for survivability, so far, in a pasture based free Range setting. My losses are at 3%, far below standard for CX.

edit: I have been keeping meat birds for two seasons, and have just done the three batches and failed completely so far at crossing them out to improve sustainability. I haven’t started trying to hatch out eggs from this years hold backs yet though. Just a few from my surviving CX that got mostly through incubation and died shortly before hatching age.