U_Stormcrow
Crossing the Road
Recommend against the Brahma. Contra to the experience of the other poster, I've found my predator aware, very attractive Dark Brahma to be VERY slow growers, mostly feathers, producing only medium large eggs. Not usually large, definitely not extra large. I just culled two last week, age almost a year (both hens), they made excellent sausage, and had a good amount (actually, a LOT) of subcutaneous fat, though they (the whole flock, actually) are free-rangers, so its not evidence they were starved into lower weight. Both were under 6# live weight, and yielded about 3.5# of carcass and meat.
Love my Comets for egg size and consistency - lg to sometimes xl, almost every damned day. At a year old, they have live weights around 5.2-5.6# each. They were egg-laying machines by four months at around 3.5# each, and have continued to put on weight steadily since, but seem to have plateaued.
My SLWs bulked up and started laying fast, around three days out of five, good alertness, chonky little beasts, but again, medium eggs.
Honestly, it seems to me that you can have a bird that makes a lot of large eggs early. or you can have a bird that puts on a ton of weight early. Or you can have a decent dual-purpose that starts between 18-24 weeks producing md-lg eggs more often than not, and hitting 5.5-6# at 5 months +/- from a host of birds. But as soon as you start pushing that weight gain towards a 3-4 month range, or the egg size to XL on 4 days of 5, or both, you just won't find a breed that does that consistently. If one did, it would dominate the market. i.e. SexLinks with very large, frequent, early eggs but relatively light early body weights (like the comet) or meaty CornishX with huge weight gain early, but slow to lay and infrequent when they get there (great egg size though - I'm using one for breeding myself, as I couldn't get the parent stock last year when we were all beggers, not choosers, at the local farm store).
Your wish list sets a very high bar. Might want to re-evaluate what is most important to you. Egg Size, Egg Frequency, Meat Production. Giving on one of those factors somewhat might make finding the other two a bit easier.
There have been efforts to breed up meat production in some of the dual purposes, and a few breeders with success in that area, but in the main, what most of us get from commercial hatcheries are lines that have emphasized egg production for years, if not decades. The CornishX really encouraged a focus on something other than meat production in many dual purpose birds - they just couldn't compete.
Love my Comets for egg size and consistency - lg to sometimes xl, almost every damned day. At a year old, they have live weights around 5.2-5.6# each. They were egg-laying machines by four months at around 3.5# each, and have continued to put on weight steadily since, but seem to have plateaued.
My SLWs bulked up and started laying fast, around three days out of five, good alertness, chonky little beasts, but again, medium eggs.
Honestly, it seems to me that you can have a bird that makes a lot of large eggs early. or you can have a bird that puts on a ton of weight early. Or you can have a decent dual-purpose that starts between 18-24 weeks producing md-lg eggs more often than not, and hitting 5.5-6# at 5 months +/- from a host of birds. But as soon as you start pushing that weight gain towards a 3-4 month range, or the egg size to XL on 4 days of 5, or both, you just won't find a breed that does that consistently. If one did, it would dominate the market. i.e. SexLinks with very large, frequent, early eggs but relatively light early body weights (like the comet) or meaty CornishX with huge weight gain early, but slow to lay and infrequent when they get there (great egg size though - I'm using one for breeding myself, as I couldn't get the parent stock last year when we were all beggers, not choosers, at the local farm store).
Your wish list sets a very high bar. Might want to re-evaluate what is most important to you. Egg Size, Egg Frequency, Meat Production. Giving on one of those factors somewhat might make finding the other two a bit easier.
There have been efforts to breed up meat production in some of the dual purposes, and a few breeders with success in that area, but in the main, what most of us get from commercial hatcheries are lines that have emphasized egg production for years, if not decades. The CornishX really encouraged a focus on something other than meat production in many dual purpose birds - they just couldn't compete.
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