Weight and age?

[scoopy82]

I have 7 boys that I dont need - they are 13 weeks old now. They are not a meat breed but I cant see any other purpose for them and have tried to give them away to no avail. There is a local company that will process home grown chicken so I am thinking of sending them there. So my question is: what is the minimum live weight I should aim for them to be and what is the ideal age. They haven't been on meat bird feed yet but hopefully if it is okay to grow them for a few more weeks i will switch them over now. They have been free ranging for a while so plenty of exercise, and they get wheat and cracked maize along with pullet grower.
Thanks for any advice in advance

 

[bwmichaud]

They really won't have much size to them if they haven't been raised on a higher protein feed. I had some araucauna cockerels that were raised with pullets on a 16% or so protein ration and the last few weeks I gave them higher protein game bird pellets. I slaughtered them at about 18 weeks. I cooked them in a crockpot and stripped the meat from the bone and each bird only yielded 1 pound of boneless meat. I could have kept them a little longer but they kept escaping and crowing and just being a general nuisance. If you can get them slaughtered cheaply, it might be worth it. If you can slaughter them yourself, even better.

 

[Bluff Country Chicken]

I agree with Brian above...if possible, process them yourself. The meat yield ends up being pretty low as there isn't much breast meat and bone seems to dominate the carcass.