Show off your Delawares! *PIC HEAVY*

[LeslieDJoyce]

I don't think my 14 week Delawares look very tasty. But I've never processed one that early so don't know how well they'd do in The Chicken Of Tomorrow contest. It is always in the back of my mind.

 

[gjensen]

I don't think my 14 week Delawares look very tasty. But I've never processed one that early so don't know how well they'd do in The Chicken Of Tomorrow contest. It is always in the back of my mind.

I think that you need to think 16-18 wks. with your birds for fryers, but you know better than me.

You can process them @ 10wks and split them and throw them on the grill for single serving birds.

Have you seen the carcasses on the Chicken Of Tomorrow winners?

Old style fryer carcasses were very light compared to what we have gotten used to. That is why so many wait so long to process some. Fryers do not look pretty on a plate. They are to be cut up. Roasters look pretty on a plate.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Whenever I get stressy about it, I google something about the history of the meat bird industry and start feeling better. Recently I found The Chicken Of Tomorrow documentaries, which are awesome. Before that I found a great study, Canadian I think, that grew out three historically preserved meat bird lines ... from like 1957, 1978, 2005 ... and tracked their growth very carefully, with photos. The modern meat birds performed like 400% better than the birds from the 50s.

I was posting about this over at the Delaware club Facebook page, and was accused of being "bitter" that people expected the birds that pass as Delaware today to perform as well as today's Cornish Cross.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

I don't eat baby Delawares because I'm not good enough yet at figuring out which ones are culls until they're a LOT older. I'm working on it, though. I'll broil instead of fry ... can't stand the smell of boiling oil.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

I think that you need to think 16-18 wks. with your birds for fryers, but you know better than me.

You can process them @ 10wks and split them and throw them on the grill for single serving birds.

Have you seen the carcasses on the Chicken Of Tomorrow winners?

Old style fryer carcasses were very light compared to what we have gotten used to. That is why so many wait so long to process some. Fryers do not look pretty on a plate. They are to be cut up. Roasters look pretty on a plate.

Whenever I get stressy about it, I google something about the history of the meat bird industry and start feeling better. Recently I found The Chicken Of Tomorrow documentaries, which are awesome. Before that I found a great study, Canadian I think, that grew out three historically preserved meat bird lines ... from like 1957, 1978, 2005 ... and tracked their growth very carefully, with photos. The modern meat birds performed like 400% better than the birds from the 50s.

I was posting about this over at the Delaware club Facebook page, and was accused of being "bitter" that people expected the birds that pass as Delaware today to perform as well as today's Cornish Cross.

Here is a link to a version of that research study that has some awesome photos of the "chicks" at various ages ... http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/26/ps.2014-04291.full.pdf

 

[gjensen]

Here is a link to a version of that research study that has some awesome photos of the "chicks" at various ages ... http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/26/ps.2014-04291.full.pdf

Generally, this article does help to put into perspective.

Now, you can do a little better than that @ 56 days. My Catalanas do as well or better, but the point is very clear.

You do have nice birds. Where is better? Depends on what you call better, but you get where I am coming from.

The emphasis on selecting our birds to be productive is just that, an emphasis. We absolutely should be faithful to our breed. We do have what we have though, and progress is step by step. It took time to fall where they have, and it would take time to return to where they were.

I reject suggestions that we should not be concerned with it at all. At the same time, I want to be realistic. It is not as if they will be top producers in a couple years. And for today, what is a top producer? Few breeds, if any, are where they could or should be.

All we can do is roll up our sleeves and go to work.

Whatever you do, enjoy them. The birds that you have are worth something. Establish for yourself a seasonal rhythm that does emphasize these things, but not at the expense of everything else. Then enjoy the process, and the journey, and the birds. They are beautiful birds. I am often tempted by them.

If somewhere along the line you felt that expanding the project on the side was necessary, go for it. Just be sure of the results before they were used more broadly. First do no harm with ideas like this.

 

[caychris]

Generally, this article does help to put into perspective.

Now, you can do a little better than that @ 56 days. My Catalanas do as well or better, but the point is very clear.

You do have nice birds. Where is better? Depends on what you call better, but you get where I am coming from.

The emphasis on selecting our birds to be productive is just that, an emphasis. We absolutely should be faithful to our breed. We do have what we have though, and progress is step by step. It took time to fall where they have, and it would take time to return to where they were.

I reject suggestions that we should not be concerned with it at all. At the same time, I want to be realistic. It is not as if they will be top producers in a couple years. And for today, what is a top producer? Few breeds, if any, are where they could or should be.

All we can do is roll up our sleeves and go to work.

Whatever you do, enjoy them. The birds that you have are worth something. Establish for yourself a seasonal rhythm that does emphasize these things, but not at the expense of everything else. Then enjoy the process, and the journey, and the birds. They are beautiful birds. I am often tempted by them.

If somewhere along the line you felt that expanding the project on the side was necessary, go for it. Just be sure of the results before they were used more broadly. First do no harm with ideas like this.

Wouldn't this discussion be better served in breeding to SOP thread? SOP birds should be both show quality and meet production averages for the breed. Wont be the best of breed meat or eggs but will be what is reasonable to be expected. At least that's my understanding of how SOP is supposed to work. Maybe there are other threads concerning breeding dels for dual purpose or meat etc rather than to SOP that would also benefit from a discussion of how the growth expectations match historical reality.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Wouldn't this discussion be better served in breeding to SOP thread? SOP birds should be both show quality and meet production averages for the breed. Wont be the best of breed meat or eggs but will be what is reasonable to be expected. At least that's my understanding of how SOP is supposed to work. Maybe there are other threads concerning breeding dels for dual purpose or meat etc rather than to SOP that would also benefit from a discussion of how the growth expectations match historical reality.

Yes. Maybe. But it came up here, and I don't think a couple posts about it here do much damage to this practically dead thread. I see a lot of this type of crossover here on BYC. Maybe especially in Delaware type threads because there are things about the breed that beg for crossover conversations.

Typically, the idea of using Delawares as meat birds comes up with a lot of very impatient questions about what to cross them with to get them closer to performing like Cornish Cross in the next generation, and typically I suggest that people give whatever Delawares they have or can find a chance through careful line breeding before they get all freaked out and start crossing things "just to see" or because "these look nothing like the birds you can buy at the store."

Poking around a little bit ... and this thread has been a help in that regard ... there are lines of Delawares that look closer to "meat bird" body type than other lines, or are faster growing. So if people want to press for a more "meat bird" type performance from their Delawares, they can choose one of those lines as their starting point.

I think people (edited to add: INCLUDING ME) choose Delawares because on paper they're supposed to produce tons of meat without dealing with patented birds, lay huge eggs all winter, and look cool. All that without realizing the breed came and went very quickly without ever getting established, much of that is probably marketing, and today's Delawares need a LOT of work.

Edited to add: Certainly the SOP for a Delaware has specific economic/market considerations, so breeding them to the SOP means breeding a good dual purpose bird. Everything about the way the Delawares are supposed to look is there to assist their value as an egg-producer and a meat bird. It's all interconnected.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Generally, this article does help to put into perspective.

Now, you can do a little better than that @ 56 days. My Catalanas do as well or better, but the point is very clear.

You do have nice birds. Where is better? Depends on what you call better, but you get where I am coming from.

The emphasis on selecting our birds to be productive is just that, an emphasis. We absolutely should be faithful to our breed. We do have what we have though, and progress is step by step. It took time to fall where they have, and it would take time to return to where they were.

I reject suggestions that we should not be concerned with it at all. At the same time, I want to be realistic. It is not as if they will be top producers in a couple years. And for today, what is a top producer? Few breeds, if any, are where they could or should be.

All we can do is roll up our sleeves and go to work.

Whatever you do, enjoy them. The birds that you have are worth something. Establish for yourself a seasonal rhythm that does emphasize these things, but not at the expense of everything else. Then enjoy the process, and the journey, and the birds. They are beautiful birds. I am often tempted by them.

If somewhere along the line you felt that expanding the project on the side was necessary, go for it. Just be sure of the results before they were used more broadly. First do no harm with ideas like this.

I love my Delawares and I'm not giving up on them. But I do acknowledge they are slow. 56 days is what? 8 weeks? My birds barely have any feathers at 8 weeks. I guess it isn't all about feathers, and one could have a juicy little naked morsel of chicken at 8 weeks. In my flock, it looks like the cockerels are starting to grow drumsticks by then, but they are mostly peeping skeletons at that age. I have yet to weigh them that young, cuz I'm not good enough at evaluating birds that young, so need them all to keep growing out so I can find "the one" to breed, so it would just be data. My head is already swimming with data I'm not sure how to apply.

I found a very cool article the other day about the slow feathering issue with Delawares. At some point, we could cross a Delaware male with a few good New Hampshire females looking for the very few fast feathering barred columbian chicks that might hatch, and work a side project that way. It has to do with the fast feathering gene not crossing over well with the Columbian gene (I guess when the slow feathering gene cultivated for better barring is also present?) It would require a LOT of hatching to get a very few of the fast feathering Delawares, and I'd want to start with a more stable line of Delawares than we currently have, I think. And I think we're getting there.

I think in my flock that's only part of it, though. Part of "it" is certainly me and my inexperience/lack of confidence evaluating very young birds. I'm working on it. I still might want to let the culls grow a little longer, though, as I prefer a roaster on my table. I'd have to pencil out all the economics when that question becomes relevant. I could probably learn to cook with a couple little birds rather than one big one.

One of my current favorite things is watching the birds in the cockerel colony as they grow in their adult tails and start posturing wanting to mate. They really start to look beautiful. Maybe especially because my line is an especially "fancy pants" line, with overly profuse tails. Yes, we're working on it. Might as well enjoy it while we do.

 

[caychris]

Yes. Maybe. But it came up here, and I don't think a couple posts about it here do much damage to this practically dead thread. I see a lot of this type of crossover here on BYC. Maybe especially in Delaware type threads because there are things about the breed that beg for crossover conversations.

Typically, the idea of using Delawares as meat birds comes up with a lot of very impatient questions about what to cross them with to get them closer to performing like Cornish Cross in the next generation, and typically I suggest that people give whatever Delawares they have or can find a chance through careful line breeding before they get all freaked out and start crossing things "just to see" or because "these look nothing like the birds you can buy at the store."

Poking around a little bit ... and this thread has been a help in that regard ... there are lines of Delawares that look closer to "meat bird" body type than other lines, or are faster growing. So if people want to press for a more "meat bird" type performance from their Delawares, they can choose one of those lines as their starting point.

I think people (edited to add: INCLUDING ME) choose Delawares because on paper they're supposed to produce tons of meat without dealing with patented birds, lay huge eggs all winter, and look cool. All that without realizing the breed came and went very quickly without ever getting established, much of that is probably marketing, and today's Delawares need a LOT of work.

I was only suggesting because this was deemed a PIC thread that many may ignore the information buried in it.
I agree when it comes to meat birds I would be happy with a bird dressing at 4lb at between 18-24 weeks and still being a roaster quality bird.

Most of the birds I have wont hit 4 lb dressed until they are well into 30s in weeks. Got my first 4lb bird at 34 weeks. (Not a Delaware) Most of my Pita Pintas processed before 24 weeks only dress at about 3.5 lbs (cockerels)

My current Del girl isnt even close and she is just 28 weeks. My largest hatchery del hit 5lb live when she was nearly a year old. She was slightly heavier than the 7-8 month olds I got from Kim

Articles and information on the growth rates of heritage birds is good to put things into perspective in the flock we have.