RCAKB what do you want from your meat chickens? I know, meat and hatching eggs. But what traits are you looking for? How important is size? There are only two of us and I can get two meals out of a fairly small pullet (one meal is in soup), but many people want a lot more meat and only eat cockerels.
How do you want to cook them? The older the chicken gets the more flavor and texture the meat has. It’s age, not size, but sex can have a lot to do with it. You can fry or grill pretty young birds but if you try to fry or grill an older bird the meat can be really tough, you need to cook them using other methods. I’m not going to give you any specific ages for when they become too old as we all have our personal preferences, but usually the cut-off for frying or grilling is around 12 to 16 weeks. When the males hit puberty those hormones add a flavor and some texture. Some of us like that but some don’t.
How are you going to raise them? If you buy every bite of food they eat you cannot get more economical than the Cornish Cross broilers. They have been bred to have excellent feed to meat conversion. If yours forage for a fair amount of their food then the cost isn’t so prohibitive but they do have a good food to meat conversion so they will probably always have an advantage unless you 100% depend on forage. Not many people can do that. To a certain extent you can control how fast they grow by how you feed them. A lot of the recommended feeding regimes make the assumption you want to get them to butcher age as fast as you can, often as early as six weeks. Others restrict the feed to slow the growth rate, either only making feed available so many hours a day or using a lower protein feed. You can slow them down making them forage for a lot of their food, but how effective that is depends a lot on your quality of forage. Normally the Cornish Cross grow so fast and so big they outgrow their body and die, either their skeleton breaks down of their heart gives out. And they can get too big to physically be able to mate, especially the males. By restricting the feed enough you can keep them alive and not too big to mate but that is kind of a specialty. It’s not easy to do that and get them to breed.
There is another class of broilers often called Rangers. These are a lot like the Cornish Cross but they grow a little slower and are bred do better on pasture. Remember the goal for the Cornish Cross is to get them to butcher size as quickly as possible. The Rangers have all the issues of the Cornish Cross, but they grow slower so it’s not quite as bad.
For a self-sustaining flock you pretty much have to use dual purpose chickens. Back in the middle 1900’s before the Cornish Cross were developed, certain breeds had been developed to give what at the time was a good meat bird, New Hampshire, Delaware, and some strains of White Rock were the normal ones. They were bred to give a good feed to meat conversion rate, have light feathers and a skin color so you got a pretty carcass when you pluck, those pin feathers can be ugly on a dark bird. There were other traits they wanted too such as laying well since they wanted hatching eggs in the breeding flock but the eggs weren’t normally that large. They don’t need to be big to hatch but you want a lot of them. Being able to take confinement well was another desirable trait. But when the Cornish Cross was developed they stopped breeding for those traits as the Cornish Cross was so much more economical. Now hatchery New Hampshire, Delaware, and White Rocks aren’t all that different from the other dual purpose breeds. Hatcheries have not bred them for meat for decades. These are not bad breeds to consider if you are going the dual purpose route but other dual purpose can work well too.
We all have our own preferences on how we cook them, at what age we butcher, how we feed them, how we hatch the eggs, and so many other things. Some people like pure breeds. Some of us go the mixed breed route, basically creating barnyard mutts. Mine are a mix of several different breeds. I generally eat the ones I don’t want to eat and breed the ones I want to eat. Over time you get a flock that better suits your purpose. But you need to know what your goals are so you can select the breeders that best suit those. I have some goals other than pure meat production when I’m selecting breeders.
One of my goals is to have broody hens so I hatch eggs from hens that go broody. Most of my hens do go broody, some a lot. But I still use an incubator to get the number of chickens I want in a year. Mine don’t go broody in January or February when I need to hatch chicks so I won’t run out of meat in the freezer. That brings up another point, how many chickens a year do you need to eat? And how much freezer space do you have. With my garden, freezer space is often pretty precious so I stagger my hatches throughout the year. Some people like to raise enough one time so they have all the meat they’ll need.
There are a lot of different parts to this, many I did not touch on. I don’t know anywhere close to enough about your goals or limitations to be able to make any kind of specific recommendation. My suggestion is to do as you are, read up on it and ask questions, but eventually just try something. There is often a lot of trial and error in getting it right. Often you find that what you thought was important really isn’t when you raise them, or something else becomes important.
Good luck!
How do you want to cook them? The older the chicken gets the more flavor and texture the meat has. It’s age, not size, but sex can have a lot to do with it. You can fry or grill pretty young birds but if you try to fry or grill an older bird the meat can be really tough, you need to cook them using other methods. I’m not going to give you any specific ages for when they become too old as we all have our personal preferences, but usually the cut-off for frying or grilling is around 12 to 16 weeks. When the males hit puberty those hormones add a flavor and some texture. Some of us like that but some don’t.
How are you going to raise them? If you buy every bite of food they eat you cannot get more economical than the Cornish Cross broilers. They have been bred to have excellent feed to meat conversion. If yours forage for a fair amount of their food then the cost isn’t so prohibitive but they do have a good food to meat conversion so they will probably always have an advantage unless you 100% depend on forage. Not many people can do that. To a certain extent you can control how fast they grow by how you feed them. A lot of the recommended feeding regimes make the assumption you want to get them to butcher age as fast as you can, often as early as six weeks. Others restrict the feed to slow the growth rate, either only making feed available so many hours a day or using a lower protein feed. You can slow them down making them forage for a lot of their food, but how effective that is depends a lot on your quality of forage. Normally the Cornish Cross grow so fast and so big they outgrow their body and die, either their skeleton breaks down of their heart gives out. And they can get too big to physically be able to mate, especially the males. By restricting the feed enough you can keep them alive and not too big to mate but that is kind of a specialty. It’s not easy to do that and get them to breed.
There is another class of broilers often called Rangers. These are a lot like the Cornish Cross but they grow a little slower and are bred do better on pasture. Remember the goal for the Cornish Cross is to get them to butcher size as quickly as possible. The Rangers have all the issues of the Cornish Cross, but they grow slower so it’s not quite as bad.
For a self-sustaining flock you pretty much have to use dual purpose chickens. Back in the middle 1900’s before the Cornish Cross were developed, certain breeds had been developed to give what at the time was a good meat bird, New Hampshire, Delaware, and some strains of White Rock were the normal ones. They were bred to give a good feed to meat conversion rate, have light feathers and a skin color so you got a pretty carcass when you pluck, those pin feathers can be ugly on a dark bird. There were other traits they wanted too such as laying well since they wanted hatching eggs in the breeding flock but the eggs weren’t normally that large. They don’t need to be big to hatch but you want a lot of them. Being able to take confinement well was another desirable trait. But when the Cornish Cross was developed they stopped breeding for those traits as the Cornish Cross was so much more economical. Now hatchery New Hampshire, Delaware, and White Rocks aren’t all that different from the other dual purpose breeds. Hatcheries have not bred them for meat for decades. These are not bad breeds to consider if you are going the dual purpose route but other dual purpose can work well too.
We all have our own preferences on how we cook them, at what age we butcher, how we feed them, how we hatch the eggs, and so many other things. Some people like pure breeds. Some of us go the mixed breed route, basically creating barnyard mutts. Mine are a mix of several different breeds. I generally eat the ones I don’t want to eat and breed the ones I want to eat. Over time you get a flock that better suits your purpose. But you need to know what your goals are so you can select the breeders that best suit those. I have some goals other than pure meat production when I’m selecting breeders.
One of my goals is to have broody hens so I hatch eggs from hens that go broody. Most of my hens do go broody, some a lot. But I still use an incubator to get the number of chickens I want in a year. Mine don’t go broody in January or February when I need to hatch chicks so I won’t run out of meat in the freezer. That brings up another point, how many chickens a year do you need to eat? And how much freezer space do you have. With my garden, freezer space is often pretty precious so I stagger my hatches throughout the year. Some people like to raise enough one time so they have all the meat they’ll need.
There are a lot of different parts to this, many I did not touch on. I don’t know anywhere close to enough about your goals or limitations to be able to make any kind of specific recommendation. My suggestion is to do as you are, read up on it and ask questions, but eventually just try something. There is often a lot of trial and error in getting it right. Often you find that what you thought was important really isn’t when you raise them, or something else becomes important.
Good luck!
Deleware laid way too late and never reached good size for me. Those were both from hatchery.
Has anyone heard of Red Rangers?
