Sustainable Meat / Standard Bred Dual Purpose Bird Thread.

[cyborg]

Please don't post recipes here. The focus of this thread is for project meat birds and improvement of dual purpose breeds. We'd like to keep the thread clean of fluff, for lack of better word, and focused to the aim of making or improving sustainable meat birds.

Cooking them IS improving them. They're kind of yucky otherwise.

 

[DesertChic]

Cooking them IS improving them. They're kind of yucky otherwise.

Agreed, but I'll respect @Egghead_Jr and PM the info instead...and probably focus on some other threads for breeding and production instead of this one. The rules here are a bit rigid for my taste.

 

[MrsMVP]

I'm interested and following this post. I recently purchased some black bresse chicks from a breeder. I intend to keep at least one of the pullets and cross breed her to an Orpington Roo. I'm not sure this would be the best cross for a nice meat chicken. What do you guys think? I need something that will tolerate the heat. I can't post weights of my growing birds as I don't own a scale currently. I just want to make sure I keep the best possible dual purpose rooster.

 

[AnthNDacula]

I'm interested and following this post. I recently purchased some black bresse chicks from a breeder. I intend to keep at least one of the pullets and cross breed her to an Orpington Roo. I'm not sure this would be the best cross for a nice meat chicken. What do you guys think? I need something that will tolerate the heat. I can't post weights of my growing birds as I don't own a scale currently. I just want to make sure I keep the best possible dual purpose rooster.

Would you not consider breeding pure Bresse? They are supposed to be one of the finest eating birds in the world as they are, and I'm not sure you can improve on that thru cross breeding. They should also be relatively heat tolerant. If you are committed to cross breeding you might consider one of the heritage cornish breeds (Dark, Red Laced, etc.) That would give you good carcass shape as well as good texture and flavor. It could also give you a higher hatch rate with the eggs and less mortality with the chicks. The offspring would still be slow growing birds but of exceptional quality.

 

[MrsMVP]

I'm concerned that the stock I have is not pure. One of the chicks has a considerable amount of yellow on its feathers - keeping the rooster of the group will not preserve anything. The body of my chicks is ok but to keep this set would mean incest and low fertility. I am looking for better stock but id like to do something with what I have. Until then id like to hatch and eat from my current stock if the mix would be worth while.

 

[Hiltonizer]

Got a successful hatch of F1 CornRocks finally, unfortunately I don't have a control of comets to go with them, but past comet males have been unimpressive. Let the data gathering begin.

EDIT: Pic added, I may have an inadvertent sex-link with this combo.

 

[ijon]

I crossed a Red Ranger hen with a Dark Cornish rooster. The rooster was from Cackle hatchery, not heritage. The first hen was real meaty and layed good. I crossed her back to the Red Ranger rooster and my second hen is small looking bone wise,but dense as can be. She also lays a big sometimes a double yolk. Maybe not as fast growing as a frakin bird, but pretty darn good. Try it you will like it.

 

[Ifish]

Nice Thread.

We chose New Hampshires for our Breed for Sustainable production and show.

Starting from Quality chicks last spring, with plans to hatch 100 chicks this year. We got a late start, but hatched our first 25 last weekend.

From the original source of chicks, Cockerels averaged 7 lbs by 20 weeks. Culls were fairly uniform and tender. Pullets layed very well through winter and have a nice meaty shape as well.

Goal of our program is to have decent layers (all ready meeting that goal, just have to maintain it), and market weight cockerels by 16 weeks with a uniform carcass. The birds will also have to meet the SOP standards for feather.

I will create a Spreadsheet to track weights weekly,with pics, provided I have the time.

This is a multi year project of ours, so I hope this thread stays alive.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

@Ifish I hear you when it comes to multi years. I myself am kind of a Plymouth Rock head. With my current goals it's really not the breed to be working with. Moved and needed to start up a new flock, well who knew the variety we'd settled on was the absolute smallest of all the Rocks. Pretty birds mind you but feathers don't taste very good. I'm looking forward to you wieghts- The New Hampshire is a particular interest. I'm guessing there will be some variation in maturity of current stock. Not to put lines of birds down or sell others rather to find sources of birds that suit peoples goals it would be nice if you'd let us know the source of your stock.

My goal with Silver Penciled Rocks is to bring them up to weight. I've another week of growth before I can post any data. The Silver are far from standard weight of breed which in itself is not a big deal but combine that with some slow maturing and that makes for small portions to eat from the grill. With this variety it will be years of work to move forward toward a faster maturing bird, not what Plymouth Rocks are known for so that's limiting but improvement can be made. For overall weight gain I'm attempting to broker a deal with a breeder of blues. Ok, I've been begging him to sell me a black pullet. He's only got a few blue right now but with luck he'll have enough black of fine standard body type to sell one this fall. Breeding Penciled to black will take two years minimum to bring back the penciling. So I'm in it for 3 years to bring up overall weight, improve maturity rate and get it all back to pretty penciled feathers that are hard to eat. They do look nice though.

By the way- nice handle you have. My email is gut2fish.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

I crossed a Red Ranger hen with a Dark Cornish rooster. The rooster was from Cackle hatchery, not heritage. The first hen was real meaty and layed good. I crossed her back to the Red Ranger rooster and my second hen is small looking bone wise,but dense as can be. She also lays a big sometimes a double yolk. Maybe not as fast growing as a frakin bird, but pretty darn good. Try it you will like it.

Did you get any weights on these birds? Are you continuing to breed for a sustainable dual purpose or will you be crossing for hybrid size for years?

The slower broilers are a good choice in my opinion to move forward into a sustainable line. I've had visions of using the Pioneer to make a lemon based red pyle line. It's doable but would take a ton of chicks for color selection. And of course as soon as you put color into the equation the meat utility will suffer. Unless you hatch hundreds a year there will be a better bird with poor or wrong color and choices must be made.

People's projects of any of the hybrid meat birds tend to stall out. It's discouraging when the weights go down but that's the reality of it. There is no way to have a hybrid meat bird breed true or expect to maintain the same weight and growth when turning it to a line of birds. Working for 4 lbs dress weight of cockerels in 14 weeks can be achieved in a line that breeds true. You can't expect much more than that. It's still a great size with least feed intake by age. About the limit in age to put on the grill (broiler).