So When Should I Process My Dominique Cockerels?

[STACEYH]

Okay, here's a question for y'all. What live weight am I looking for?

I try for about 6/7 lbs they loose about a lb. to 1 1/2 lbs.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't have a set weight, I just go by age. There can be a fair amount of variation even between full siblings, I could wind up waiting a long time for a little bit of weight gain.

 

[Molpet]

Thank you. I notice soup and stew are not on this list. Does this come under the category of "fowl"?

Yes
I pressure cook the old ones.

 

[STACEYH]

I do homemade chicken and egg noodle soup or chicken and dumplings.

 

[Morrigan]

One thing I've found is that I can let cockerels go a couple of weeks longer in the winter, then I would in the spring. The lack of sunlight seems to suppress the hormones a bit, and lets you get a little more size on them before the toughness and annoying randiness sets in.

Generally, I like to butcher anywhere between 12 and 16 weeks. The old adage "when they start to crow, it's time to go" is actually a pretty good rule.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Dominique? Probably 7 lbs or so from a cockerel.

Excellent, thank you!

 

[NatJ]

The meat seemed to be greyish pigmented. Different from grocery-store meat definitely. I think we processed either four or six of them and they were all like that. It was just dark, hard to describe.

One time I was butchering some bantam cockerels, and the blue-legged ones had a different color of meat and fat (slightly greyish), when compared with the yellow-legged ones. I don't remember if there were any white-legged ones in that batch, but I decided that whatever changes the skin/leg color must also affect some of the other tissues a bit. I had skinned the birds I was looking at, so the color difference was definitely in the meat & fat, not just the skin. (There were no Silkies involved. They were a selection of clean-legged bantams from a hatchery, and they all had normal feathers, no crests, no extra toes. So I was not seeing the SIlkie dark-everything trait.)

The Cornish Cross we usually see in the grocery store are yellow-skinned, while Black Australorps should be white skinned, so that seems to agree with what I noticed in my bantams.

 

[NatJ]

All of which is to ask those of you who process/ butcher dual- purpose birds: when should I plan on processing these guys?

I've dealt more with bantams than dual purpose, but I start butchering when they start crowing, or when the pen looks too crowded, whichever happens first.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I do homemade chicken and egg noodle soup or chicken and dumplings.

Yes, yum! I made my first batch of homemade noodles last week. I love my KitchenAid!

 

[STACEYH]

Egg noodles I have always done by hand. They are so easy.
KitchenAid I totally agree. I got one a few years ago. Makes for a silky smooth cheese cake.