so ive been interested in getting meat birds for a while now, but this year I'm thinking I may decide to actually do it.
You are probably talking about chickens and not ducks, quail, turkey, or something else. People raise a lot of different species for meat. For chickens there are three basic types: Cornish X, Rangers, or Dual Purpose. Do you have anything specifically in mind?
The CX quickly grow to butcher age. If you try to keep them any longer than 8 weeks you risk them dying or their breaking down. How you keep them is important. If you manage them for optimum weight gain you have definite timelines for butchering. If you manage them differently then you can delay butchering some. If managed for optimum weight gain they are the most cost efficient to raise. You butcher them so young you can cook them using any method.
Rangers grow slower than CX and are better at foraging. They are typically ready to butcher at 12 weeks but can usually be kept longer if you wish. If you butcher by 12 weeks you can cook them using any method but the meat might have a bit more flavor and texture than the CX. They can't match the CX food to meat conversion ratio but aren't that bad, especially if they forage for some of their food. Details matter.
Dual Purpose cover a huge number of breeds and give you a tremendous number of options. For their own reasons people may butcher them anywhere from 12 weeks of age onward, though you usually don't get a lot of meat until they are around 16 weeks old. That's just approximate. Some early developers have a lot of meat for the breed at 16 weeks, some later developers still will not have fleshed out well. That's with cockerels from the same flock raised and fed together. A lot less consistency with them. I have a dual purpose flock for dual purposes. I hatch my own replacements and eat the surplus.
but I was just wondering if anyone had any tips to make it easier
I'm not going to try to answer this. I'd be typing all day and most of that would not interest you. All of your questions are answered in this forum but it will take a lot of digging and reading to find it all.
My suggestion is to go through the stickies mentioned above and scan this forum, the decide if you are talking about CX, Rangers, or Dual Purpose. Then ask specific questions that are pertinent to your decisions. Start a new thread for each specific question, you are more likely to get your specific question answered that way. This is a huge question, there is an entire section of this forum devoted to Meat Birds.
Good luck and welcome to the adventure.
