What type of meat birds for self sufficiency.

[crombienator]

I am looking to get into raising meat birds. I have seen that the Cornish hybrids seem to be the best if I'm going to be ordering them each time I want meat. What birds do you suggest if I want to breed them and use them for meat, so that my flock is self-sufficient.

It looks like the Cornish are ready to be processed at 6 to 12 weeks. I am assuming if I want to make them self-sufficient that I have to get a breed that will take longer to get to process time? Also I am assuming that the most reliable way to do this would be with an incubator as opposed to naturally? Thanks for your help.


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[eviemethugh]

Just my two cents....WAY more cost efficient to buy each year, raise for 8-9 weeks, and be DONE. For several reasons. We use our two "chicken tractors" year round for all sorts of things. Right now one of them is the sleeping area for our two pigs (we just leave the door open to the rest of their pen & run.) And the other will soon be the nightly roosting space for our turkeys. They constantly have something different rotating through them, so I have fewer structures to also build and maintain year round. We re-use every single thing we buy, there is no "this is only for that." By freeing ourselves up from the chore of meat birds the majority of the year I am able to dabble in other seasonal things, and by reusing feeders and housing my out of pocket expenses are mainly just feed and the cost of the animal. It is also nice to have a seasonal change and not be saddled down with so many things going on. We were able to go to the beach this year with my cousin only getting eggs and refilling water for our layers! Because I carefully planned all of my ventures to end within the month before we left, and literally started two new farm things the week we came back.

The end cost of our Organic Cornish X after 8&9 weeks were $8 EACH. There is no way I could keep parent flocks going all year without doubling that cost (or more.) And the initial cost of building the tractor can be spread across different animals all year round.

For my family, that is what is sustainable. I have fun with my egg layers all year round, and occasionally pop a dozen in the incubator when I am up for a surprise. There is no pressure to have a good hatch so that we can eat. And we sell enough eggs to keep our layers self sustained with no need for $ input from us, they literally feed themselves with their own profits.

^^Eric mentioned Delawares, I can definitely see how that would be a good mix. Our Light Brahmas (basically the same as delaware) are twice the size of our other new egg layers at about 10 weeks old right now. And the males are supposed to reach 12 lbs by 20 weeks! I've always enjoyed reading about breeding programs, but it's not right for me (I was going to say our family, but it's really ME! HA. I always want to try new things!) and just wanted to share what I have learned.

 

[Ridgerunner]

There is a lot of good information in that post but the OP (Original Poster) specifically said:

I have seen that the Cornish hybrids seem to be the best if I'm going to be ordering them each time I want meat. What birds do you suggest if I want to breed them and use them for meat, so that my flock is self-sufficient.

Crombienator recognizes that the hybrid meat birds are the most cost efficient, you won’t get a lot of argument from me on that, but want to hatch their own. I’ll try to address that question specifically.

Self-sufficient can mean different things to different people. I think here you mean that you want to hatch your own chicks. Chicks are a cost but a really big part of the cost is feed. Housing and brooding costs enter into that too but once you get your set-up those costs drop for the second batch. For me, self-sufficient is largely about feeding them. If you buy all or most of what they are going to eat you are not going to be very self-sufficient unless you are talking commercial methods and quantities where you sell enough eggs or meat to cover costs. If yours forage for a lot of their feed or you grow your own, feed costs become less important. I don’t think that’s what we are talking about here.

There are several threads in this section where people talk about what breeds to get for dual purpose meat birds. EggheadJr has a good one but there are many others. You will get different opinions. In my opinion, breed is not as important as strain. People like to think that every bird of a breed is identical worldwide. They are not. If someone breeds a flock of Delaware for meat purposes and ignores egg laying, you will eventually get a pretty good meat flock but they won’t lay great. If someone breeds Delaware for egg production and ignores the meat properties, you get good egg layers that are not that great for meat. There are general breed tendencies, true Cornish not the Cornish Cross hybrids, should have more breast meat than about any other breed. If white meat is what you want, it’s good to have Cornish in the mix.

A problem is that different hatcheries have different people selecting which birds get to breed. They use different criteria when selecting breeders. In general you are not going to get a good meat bird from a hatchery, but hatchery stock is what my flock is based on. In general I eat the ones I don’t want to eat and breed the ones that I do want to eat. Over time I get a flock that better suits my purposes. If you can start off with stock that suits your purposes you are much better off, but it’s hard finding that plus the chicks or hatching eggs are usually not cheap.

Part of it is your expectations too. Many people are looking at getting the biggest bird they possibly can. I like a bigger bird, I’m trying to breed for that, but half the chicks I hatch are female. Half the chickens I eat are female. There are only two of us so we get enough meat from the smaller females. Some people sell any females they hatch they don’t need to keep to replace layers and only eat the males. My goal is not to get the absolute largest cockerel I can, I want my smallest cockerel to be a decent size. We all do these things differently.

One big difference in the hybrid Cornish Cross and a dual purpose chicken for meat is butcher age. The hybrids are butchered at a very young age so they are very tender. You can cook them any way you wish, including frying or grilling. The dual purpose birds put on meat a whole lot slower so they are butchered at an older age. If you butcher them at an age young enough to fry or grill, there won’t be a lot of meat there. If you wait to let them gain more weight you need to change your cooking methods to something slower and with more moisture. Again, we are all different. Some people are find with frying a 14 week old chicken, others will find those too tough, especially if they are used to the chicken you buy at the store.

I love my broody hens. They do all the work of hatching and raising the chicks while I just reap the benefits. But even with a small flock where a lot of the hens go broody every year, I can’t raise enough chicks for my meat purposes relying only on broody hens. And they don’t go broody when you want them to. I have to use an incubator. If I doubled or more likely tripled the size of my flock I might get enough broody hens to raise enough, but feed costs and facility sizes go way up. With an incubator you control when you hatch and pretty much how many you hatch. A lot of dual purpose breeds don’t go broody very often to start with. I try to breed broodiness into my flock and most do go broody, but when I started with hatchery birds, some breeds known to go broody a lot, I got very few broody hens. I think you should count on an incubator.

There is another issue. How much freezer space do you have? Some people pressure can chicken to preserve it instead of freezing it, but chicken can take up a lot of space in the freezer. This time of year freezer space is pretty precious for me with all the stuff from the garden. With the hybrid broilers you pretty much need to process them when they are a certain age or they get medical problems. With dual purpose chickens you can wait on butchering them but if you are buying their feed the costs per pound of meat can go way up. If they are mostly foraging for their feed it’s not as bad.

I know this is a very long post but I consider this a fairly complicated topic. That’s mainly because you have so many different options, so many different ways to go. You probably should spend some time reading different threads in this section to see people’s thoughts on the topic. We all have so many different goals related to this and we all do it so differently that there is no one way to go. You’ll have to pick a direction and just jump in.

Good luck!

 

[eviemethugh]

What you are excited about is not self-sufficiency when you must outsource chicks and feed. You are excited about the outdoor feedlot concept that you do yourself.

Is that so horrible? I think lots of people are looking to have more input into HOW their food is raised, without giving up vacations, tons of money, and doing hours of farm chores a day. This gets more off topic from OP, so I will keep it short. We free range (tractors are just used to coop at night), we have a 300 year old family connection to our local organic feed mill (amazing rations!), and we raised 200 **** happy chickens this summer. AND took several vacations. I call that a win win.
I am a huge advocate for more small poultry farms. Hundreds of thousands more! My family has farmed in America for 7+ generations, I have no clue how many before that in Europe. So many family farms around us are lost to debt to the big "name brand" chicken companies. We need to take back our food, our farms, and our interest in how it is all produced. More people should start with just a couple bucks and a couple chicks and not feel like it's all or nothing (i.e.: you don't have to raise your own corn and breed your own birds to do an amazing thing.)
Yes, it is not true self sufficiency if you are preparing for the apocalypse and need food security.
I think it is awesome how many people in this forum breed and keep records and improve lines over time! Y'all are doing a great thing, I hope you don't think my posts have put down what you do at all! So maybe, don't call me an outdoor feedlot

although I probably am, my feedlot chickens are way better/healthier/happier than what comes from the grocery store!

 

[centrarchid]

Economics does not appear to be OP's overriding concern.

 

[eviemethugh]

Economics does not appear to be OP's overriding concern.

I read everything twice before I posted and OP didn't say that outright and I thought I wrote my post in a nice way. Sorry if I offended. I was also making a point about time input, and that it is nice to have a break and work with the seasons.

 

[BeachyFarmChx]

It's a shame how much drama is perpetuated on several of these threads instead of encouragement. Sad. It's not a competition, but a learning experience for everyone...even those who believe they know all of the answers. Because none of us do.

I have 20 birds. It's rather modest, but it's what we can handle at the moment. I appreciated @eviemethugh words because it spoke to average beginners or laymen. We have been raising chx for 3.5 years. It's included several killed, neighborhood reporting (and having to stop a while), many things. We would have probably had 40-55 birds this autumn, but lost a lot in spring due to mistakes.
Our current desire is to fill our freezer, quarterly through the year. We are keeping our layers, but doing a constant "add to flock & grow more" to try & replace the birds we plan to cull. I'm on here to learn from some very knowledgeable people, but it's very discouraging when I'm afraid to ask a question or make a post due to condescending folks. Let's be adults. If there's nothing you have to add that can help, can you please not add?

My current question is about dual breeds. I own a few. I read that the meat is stringy if they are allowed to lay a while and then they are culled. What feedback can you folks give on that?

 

[centrarchid]

I would base efforts on an F1 hybrid between a female dual purpose breed and a male cornish. The idea of self -sufficient can be expressed in degrees. Will you still be outsourcing feed?

 

[crombienator]

I would base efforts on an F1 hybrid between a female dual purpose breed and a male cornish. The idea of self -sufficient can be expressed in degrees. Will you still be outsourcing feed?

Yes I meant in terms of not having to buy more chicks


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[crombienator]

And excuse my ignorance.... F-1 Hybrid??


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