What Age To Process?

[jthayerkatz]

I would like too know, what age are your birds when you process them for meat? I am reffering to dual purpose birds such as RIR or plymouth rocks. I am raising a flock for both meat and egg production with roos and hens, and incubating my own eggs. When do you seperate and plump the birds that are going to be culled?

 

[southernchicks]

Curious about this myself...

 

[Dragonfly Ranch]

We harvested our Cornish Rocks at 8 weeks for roos and 10 weeks for hens

Sandee

 

[southernchicks]

Do you take them to someone or do it yourselves?

 

[Dragonfly Ranch]

Quote:
We did ourselves had 16 birds to harvest. Took about 5 hours to do the roos (8 of them) since it was our first time. Two weeks later did 6 hens and took husband by himself about 2 1/2 hours. Although we have talked about a plucker for 50 birds we want to raise next year. Have been looking for one to rent but haven't found one in our area.

 

[gkeesling]

when I ordered my Plymouth Rocks pullets Ideal Hatchery put in 7 RIR cockerels as packing peanuts. I had them processed at 15 weeks and they turned out real well. there is an Amish family not far from me who has a poulty processing place. They do somewhere around 200 chickens during the day. He charged me $2.70 per chicken to have it processed and bagged.

 

[cmom]

Cornish Rocks are meat birds. I processed mine 7/8 weeks. They were eating machines. I'm not sure about dual purpose birds. I have read an article by a university (I don't remember which one) suggested processing dual purpose birds around 16/18 weeks.

 

[jthayerkatz]

My Rocks are Barred not cornish so I am specifically looking for info about dual purpose birds. Thanks for your input.

 

[southernchicks]

Do you guys find that it's worth it ($ savings wise) to raise them for meat? Does it pan out after buying feed?

 

[jthayerkatz]

Although it may not exactly be cost effective. It is the assurance that you are getting A healthy happy bird with no hormones or additives. To us it is worth the extra couple of pennies to know exactly what we are eating. their are programs that will keep track of costs and production to help you decide if it is worth the expence too you.

Plus there is no way to measure the cute factor of raising little baby chickens..