Hello all. I'm pretty new at BYC, but wanted to speak up in praise of the Delaware. We raised three dozen Delaware/RIR crosses this year, and they gained weight nicely, had excellent temperament, and the hens (who didn't go to the freezer with their rooster friends) are now laying beautifully. We butchered them at 20 weeks, and, even though they were pretty active, the meat isn't tough. The flavor is exquisite, but that shouldn't come as any surprise when you consider half their diet was grass and garden scraps. The breasts were long, but substantial, and legs were nicely proportioned. The roos got so much bigger than the hens, I had to look it up, and I learned a new phrase in the process: gender dimorphism. Now that I can throw a term like that into everyday conversation, I've pretty much got it made.
I don't know what the food/gain ratio was, because we didn't keep an exact count of how many bags of food went into the tractor and because their diet was supplemented with all the grass and grasshoppers they could scratch up, and also lots of scrap lettuce, kale, chard, etc. Sure, they didn't gain weight like a white cornish cross would, but if pure efficiency was the goal, I'd just leave it to the pros and buy my meat at Safeway.
One of the big, mellow roosters avoided going under the hatchet, and next spring we are going to let a couple hens go broody. Will it be with a RIR? Will it be with an Australorpe? Who knows what kind of mongrel DP chickens we'll have by then.
I don't know what the food/gain ratio was, because we didn't keep an exact count of how many bags of food went into the tractor and because their diet was supplemented with all the grass and grasshoppers they could scratch up, and also lots of scrap lettuce, kale, chard, etc. Sure, they didn't gain weight like a white cornish cross would, but if pure efficiency was the goal, I'd just leave it to the pros and buy my meat at Safeway.
One of the big, mellow roosters avoided going under the hatchet, and next spring we are going to let a couple hens go broody. Will it be with a RIR? Will it be with an Australorpe? Who knows what kind of mongrel DP chickens we'll have by then.
