We have grown our own Bronze birds for many years, about 15- and actually have a shot of Eastern Wild in them, about 2 generations ago.
This summer, due to the belief that our last Bronze hen had disapeared, we purchased 20 BBW birds as chicks, from I believe Ideal. We have just finished processing those that are intended to be ate. The biggest Tom weighed 55 live, but most were down b/w 35 and 40 lb live. These are far meatier, and heavier than any Bronze bird we've ever raised- of course, we do not raise the BBB birds.
We have 6 of these BBW birds left, as of right now, my parents have a trio that they plan to keep back, and I have a pair- plus one odd gobbler. I plan to keep my pair, and butcher the odd man in a few weeks. I weighed him yesterday, and he weighed 38- but he is the smaller of the two-- but he has very little interest in being a male; so butcher he goes. Hopefully, b/w my parents and I, with our 5 breeder birds, we can get some young ones to hatch out next spring, and get these birds to reproduce successfully-- although I have my doubts. My hen has been squatting now for a couple of weeks, and I did watch the big tom try to mount her yesterday, it was a site to see... I really hope he can cover her naturally. If not, I've got a young trio of Bronze birds, and hopefully the dark jake will be able to cover that monster hen next spring.
All in all, we ended up growing out almost 50 young poults this year, and have our last mature hen who hatched out her second batch about 2 weeks ago, for the year- luckily this batch only has about 6 in it, instead of the 15 she hatched in May. We have not butchered any of the Bronze birds yet-- that'll start in about another month. I know my parents have an old mature pair left, and plan to keep back a new, young trio-- as well as I've taken a young trio up to my place.
So I guess that means, that between all of us, we'll have 5 breeder BBW birds, and 8 of the old school Bronze's...
