What Dual Purpose Chickens Are Good To Eat????

[MysteryChicken]

Just to share some Meyer's Hatchery's Birds that are good Breeder Quality.

Heritage Plymouth Barred Rocks.

Sumatras

 

[PDXJULES]

Yes, you can eat the hens. On average, they will weigh less than the males of the same breed. I'll leave it to someone else to answer the rest, though you can butcher at any age. I've not butchered any (of those breeds), my SLWs are all breeding hens. Eventually, they will be stock or sausage.

I might add to this that younger hens and Roos have a higher rate of egg fertility with less chick mortality. That data is from commercial producers. Since laying reduces at molt, you might plan your layer replacements to ramp up egg production, select some by 22-24 weeks for Breeding pens, fertilized egg and chick production. Sell or Harvest most Cockerels at 16-18 weeks for meat, selecting some for breeding and flock protection. Industry cycles in new layers at 1.5 years i think. Sale of Pullets, eggs and adult layers once your families needs are met can help your Revenue plan. Some also sell/barter compost and feathers as a product. Collect and freeze parts you may not use - i.e. livers, feet - for market or Food Bank Donation, and use the Tax Deduction. You will have to show sales for that to qualify to offset Revenues. Just some thoughts.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Also can I eat the girl birds, for instance if I did not want any more eggs but I needed more meat and my chicks turned out with a bunch of girls, can I eat them?

That's what I do but some people sell the pullets instead to help pay for feed costs. As always there are different ways to go about this.

How important is size to you? There are only two of us and I'm not selling meat commercially. I can get two meals from a small dual-purpose pullet. If the chicken is a large cockerel that means I get leftover chicken for lunch. I like the larger cockerels and those lunches but size is not an obsession with me. More of a nice to have. I do select my breeding roosters for size, size is a nice to have.

I tend to butcher my mixed breed dual purpose cockerels between 16 and 23 weeks, that suits the way I raise and cook them. I generally keep my pullets until they are about 8 months old before I butcher. I want to evaluate their egg laying a bit before I decide which I want to keep as replacement layers. They still cook the same as the younger cockerels.

Chickens develop flavor and texture as they age but there is a big difference in how fast cockerels develop compared to the girls. The hormones that hit the boys in adolescence greatly accelerates both texture and flavor. The texture difference is obvious when I butcher. Some people call the flavor "gamey", some like it and some don't. That's why you steer a young bull calf, to stop the hormones from turning the meat gamey and tough.

Also, are the breeds above broody, because I do not want to have to use a incubator?

This kind of plays into the "can you eat the girls" question. No matter the breed, some hens will go broody. No matter the breed, some hens will never go broody. Some breeds are a lot more likely to go broody than others but there is no guarantee that any one specific hen will. Even if one goes broody a lot there is no guarantee that she will when you want her to.
How many chickens will you want to eat each year? How often will you eat chicken and how many people are you feeding? My normal routine is to bake a chicken on a Thursday and use leftovers in soup Saturday. I can vegetable soup from the stuff in my garden so Saturday evening meals are soup, cheese, and crackers, easy preparation and easy clean-up. But with visits to the grandchildren and other events we don't do that every week. With a bit of trial and error I determined I need to hatch about 45 chicks a year. I eat older hens as they are retired and old roosters as they are replaced. 45 worked out to be my number.

When I hatch I never know how many will be boys and girls. Over time the ratio is real close to 50-50, but even with different hatches a year I often get several more of one sex than the other for the year. It might be more boys, it might be girls. I don't know how many chicks I'll need to hatch every year to get 45 cockerels. It may be over 100, it may only be 80. By eating both girls and boys I know I need to hatch 45. If I only ate cockerels I'd have to hatch at least twice as many chicks, which would mean more facilities, more room, buying more feed, and more hatching. I have a system that I know what I need to do to meet my requirements.

How much freezer space do you have? My freezer space is pretty precious, especially during growing season as I keep vegetables, fruit, and berries in there as I gather enough to preserve by canning. I make a lot of jam and jelly. I keep fruit and berries in the freezer until I get enough (and time) to make a batch. I may have four or five gallons of frozen tomatoes in there before I cook them down to a sauce and can them. When I butcher chickens I part the meat to get serving portions as that is how I cook it but I also save the rest of the carcass to make broth. I'm constantly managing freezer space during the summer so I can't just fill that freezer up with enough chicken meat to last the year. Some people would just buy another freezer which could solve the problem. But I don't, I can mange it.

This means I have to have a regular supply of chickens hitting butcher age or I run out of chicken. I purposely bred broodiness into my flock, you can do that if you have some broody hens. I really like broody hens to hatch and raise the chicks but be careful what you ask for. Mine go broody during the summer so much it hurts egg production. My broody buster is almost always in use.

But they almost never go broody in the late fall, winter, or real early spring. To get that constant supply of chickens to eat I use an incubator and hatch about 20 in February and raise them myself. After that I pretty much rely on broody hens to raise the rest. When one goes broody and I give her eggs to hatch I usually put some eggs in the incubator too. The broody gets them those raise too. Sometimes a broody hatch doesn't go well. For example, one time a snake ate all the eggs under a broody hen. I kept her broody with fake eggs and she still had the incubator chicks to raise. Before I bred broodiness in my flock I used that incubator a lot more.

The point of this is that you cannot control when or how often you will get a broody hen or how many she will actually hatch. My typical laying/breeding flock is one rooster and 6 to 8 hens. Even if I bought an extra freezer I'd have to keep and feed more hens and have extra facilities to get enough meat to last the year if I relied on broody hens. The only way you have any control over when you hatch is to get an incubator and use it.

This is my system that suits my goals. Other people have different goals. What I do will not work for them at all. I'm not obsessed over size so am quite happy with the hatchery stock I started with. I'm not planning on showing mine so I don't care if they meet SOP standards or not. Since mine are mixed breed mutts there is no breed SOP anyway. I manage them for what I want. Hopefully this will help you determine what you think might be a good way to go.

You can get tied up in knots trying to make a decision. Try to not let the pursuit of perfection keep you away from plenty good enough. There are breed differences and the quality of the stock you start with makes a difference, so making your initial selection is important. But as long as you pay attention to some basics a lot of these differences may be more nuanced that apparent. You are not really going to see a lot of difference between many breeds. In other words with just a little care it can be hard to make a bad decision. There are a while lot of dual purpose breeds out there that can work quite well.

Good luck!

 

[RUNuts]

Ok, you guys are so helpful! I now have an idea of what I am going to do! Thanks!

Very glad we could help. We, as always, are interested in what you decided and fully expect goals to change or be modified as you gain experience. All of ours have also changed (probably several times and in several directions ).

Several of us have posted goals for open discussion and ideas and gained from the experience of others willing to share and provide input. Cheers!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Some of us are still seeking upright freezers for storing culled birds - availability has been an issue since the start of COVID last year. Yes, chest freezers are generally cheaper, and somewhat more available - but my years in food service taught me that convenience of access often wins out over FIFO - First In, First Out - so I would recommend holding out for an upright if you have the need and the space for it.

 

[NatJ]

Yes, chest freezers are generally cheaper, and somewhat more available - but my years in food service taught me that convenience of access often wins out over FIFO - First In, First Out - so I would recommend holding out for an upright if you have the need and the space for it.

If you put the new things under the older things in a chest freezer, then convenience does get the old things (now on top) used first. Of course that means extra bother when putting things in.

I like chest freezers because things never fall out on my foot
(Of course it's never me that balances stuff precariously. It must be the other people in the house. )

 

[RUNuts]

And chest freezers don't pop open because gravity shifted something precariously stacked inside or you just plain left the door a little bit open. And a little bit is all it took.

 

[Mtnboomer]

I have 16 cf upright and a 14.5 cf chest or deep freezer. The upright holds all my wild game separated by species and cut of deer.
The chest holds our chickens, pork and beef we get from family, and the garden goodies that don't get canned.

Access and budget are the 2 biggest considerations and with my ongoing back issues, i love my upright more and more each year.

Life hack for uprights to prevent uneven items from falling off shelves. I use wires, zipties, or twist ties btw shelves space far enough that items stored horizontally can't slide though but can be tilted and removed between the ties. Or if the freezer us stock full, just untie and remove item then retie. Nothing ever falls out or bumps door open. Wires with quick clips are even faster and more efficient.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Life hack for uprights to prevent uneven items from falling off shelves. I use wires, zipties, or twist ties btw shelves space far enough that items stored horizontally can't slide though but can be tilted and removed between the ties. Or if the freezer us stock full, just untie and remove item then retie. Nothing ever falls out or bumps door open. Wires with quick clips are even faster and more efficient.

Have you seen the bungies??? Stretched between shelves, not sure of the spacing. Not good for real small things, but either grabs or at least slows large things trying to fall out, and mostly don't have to be moved when putting things in or taking them out - as long as its straight in/straight out. Not so good for moving things left to right on the shelves.

and I've taken the thread off topic, sorry!

 

[Pandemic pandemonia]

Hello,
I do not have chickens yet, but I am looking for egg layers and meat birds. I want to be able to breed my own meat birds, but am i correct that you can not breed them at home unless they are dual pupose? Also which one would you suggest? Thanks!

I have White Jersey Giant Roosters at this time and one Black and White Brahma Rooster. I was told the Jersey Giants will remain a tender bird up to eighteen months for roasting by a local chicken expert. I have not processed any of mine because it's hard to kill the babies I raised so I'm just holding on to them or selling to good homes for now. The Brahma is about as big as my Giants at this time. They are probably about 8 months old. The Giants are a slow growing bird that is why they are supposed to be tender for eating longer. They are supposed to be a type that you can use for homesteading and raise more of and the hens lay large eggs. The males are supposed to get up to 13 lbs. and the female Giants are to weigh about 10 lbs. My boys are already larger than most roosters and still growing. That takes a lot of feed before you get to a full grown bird but if you want to have one you can keep alive for breeding stock it might be a good choice. My Barred Rock was not as large as these are now and they were very nice birds that did hatch eggs and were dual purpose birds they say.