Self-Sustaining Meat Chickens?

[duluthralphie]

20 weeks. Tender as could be.

 

[duluthralphie]

How long did it take to get to 15 lbs and how chewy was it.

 

[RCAKB]

Thanks! I'm in north Texas, I am in the planning stage in getting chickens. My husband is going to be building the coop very soon. Thanks again for your help.

Check out this link. Just about everything you would like to know about large fowl white Cornish. Half of the parental cross used to originally create the Cornish Rock X and before you ask, Yes you can create the Cornish Rock X by using a white Plymouth Rock with a large fowl white Cornish however No, it will not grow out anywhere near as fast as those available from the hatcheries. Those fast growing crosses available from hatcheries are the results of decades of selective breeding and culling to produce parents that can create these fast growing broilers.

Where are you locatd in the Lone Star State. I may be able to give you some help locating LFW Cornish if you want to go that way.

 

[RCAKB]

Thanks!! Sounds like we have some stuff in common. I will look into the French Black Copper Marans. I have to admit I am a bit spoiled on bird hardiness since at this point I have only had ducks so far. So far none have even been sick. (knock on wood) Thanks again!

Hi, welcome to BYC!

I wanted the same thing... so I went with French Black Copper Marans because flavor was also important. We love the dark eggs and boys grow for 16-20 weeks. Even though they take longer to grow out, they are hardy beyond belief and don't eat as heavily as broilers who only take 8 weeks. So more time yes but not necessarily twice as much feed. I have had 2 hens hatch and raise broods. So they are also capable and plenty broody enough in my experience. That being said I like to have a few others just for fun. So I've got a Rock, EE, and a production red.. in addition to my Silkie flocks!

I've tried a lot of breeds including Orpington. They are fine but none have made pet status so far... and they grow much slower, so aren't my breed of choice. That being said, we do eat our extra Silkie cockerels at the same age others are being processed. Which is usually more about my convenience than the age of the bird.

Ultimately, you could even have a barn yard mix flock with different DP breed hens and any cock bird of your choice. I grow mine out, sell the pullets, and process most boys. I also keep my boys in a stag pen so I can control my mating/hatching. The grow out boys will start trying to mate their female counterparts before processing age if not separated out.

It's always nice if you could really fall in love with a breed! It kinda changes when you become passionate about it. It really helps when challenges arise, and... they WILL.

Anyways, hope you have fun!

 

[RCAKB]

Thanks!! I just might have to do that, get multiple breeds for my meat birds. I already know I am going to have multiple layer breeds. I mean come on blue eggs, green eggs?! <3

Consider some of the heritage breeds, especially the less common types. Hatchery barred Plymouth Rocks will be smaller than standard, bred mostly for egg production, not meat qualities. The buff Plymouth Rocks I got from a hatchery were much nicer! Not so popular, bigger and better though. I do like Chanteclers, Wyandottes, and the slower growing Cornish, although the Cornish are poor egg layers. French Marans are good too.
Consider getting a mixed group of straight run heavy breed chicks, and see what you like! Mary

 

[RCAKB]

Thanks!! We eat one whole chicken per meal. Ideally, we would try to have chicken 3-4 days a week. At this point, I only want to sell eggs. My husband has 2 people lined up already and he hasn't built the coop yet nor we have gotten the chickens. Lol Patience, dear husband, patience.

My cornies aren't mature enough to lay eggs. I do have one cornie, that from the beginning, separated herself from her siblings, and wouldn't gorge. She hangs out with the leghorns.

Having the mixture of all three types of birds, I can harvest when I want from all three groups. A normal, full chicken from the grocery store is 6 meals for me. I figure I could easily eat 2 whole chickens in a month. So I should have 24+ chickens for harvesting in my planning. When I have company, I am all for serving up a home raised chicken! And I have noticed that company eats a lot more than I would in a serving.

With a hungry husband and a growing boy, would one whole chicken equal one meal?

Would you eat chicken once a week?

Did you want to sell any of the chickens?

I know, things that make you go hhhmmm...and yummmm...

 

[RCAKB]

Thanks!! Size is a big factor since we will consume 1 whole chicken per meal. I will cook them in a wide variety of ways, fried, grilled, slow cooker, pressure cooker, stove top, oven, just about every way. I will have to try and see whether we are a before or after puberty.

I plan on free-ranging most of the time, so a large portion will come from bugs. They will have access to two of my big compost piles and that should suffice for the most part. I might add in something else if I feel like they need more. Here is another question, when I had ducklings, I supplemented with nutritional yeast because of the niacin in it to help with the rapid bone growth, can I give that to chickens as well?

I would prefer a breed that does go broody in hopes of them raising the chicks and so I don't have to purchase a large incubator but that might be inevitable.

I have 2 deep freezers right now and will have a big garden next year as well. I will definitely need to stagger ours too.

Thanks again for your input!!

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!

 

[RCAKB]

Good point! Thanks!!

Yes, I saw good growth and personality from the white rocks. Deleware laid way too late and never reached good size for me. Those were both from hatchery.

My Marans are not from the hatchery. And I would try to find a GOOD breeder once I knew my chosen breed. The birds are usually not much pricier... if even any. Even then, you will will have to be selective and keep ONLY the best to breed forward. Even show winning birds will not produce 100% show winning offspring.

 

[RCAKB]

Dang!! He is huge! Nice!! I totally agree with the pure white comment. There are too many we need more color! I'm not saying white is bad, one of my favorite ducks is a Pekin, she is beautiful and a sweetheart. <3 <3

Are you willing to ship chicks? I'm in Texas.

View attachment 1174985 View attachment 1174986


Turkey on left 12 pounds dressed ...toad on right 15.5 pounds dressed no giblets....

 

[RCAKB]

Great information! I will check it out. Thanks!!

I highly recommend the Buckeye for your needs.

I researched them, then tried a batch a few seasons ago. I was really impressed with the growth of the cockerals and hens. They are known for coming to about 5 pounds in 18 weeks, if you feed right. They are an intelligent, gentle bird, that forages well. Hardy and decent layers (some lines lay better than others). Good white meat, with plenty of breast (just a bit longer in the leg than the traditional CornX).

If I hadn't decided to put my efforts towards egg color, thus went Marans and Cream Legbars for olive eggers, I would be doing Buckeyes for meat/dual purpose.

They would definitely be a nice, sustainable meat bird to raise season after season.

Good place to find info on the breed is this club's facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmericanBuckeyePoultryClub/?fref=mentions

Some Buckeye breeders are a bit persnickety, but the above group is a real nice group, and helpful.

LofMc