Dec 31, 2024Update Sustainable Meatbird Breeding As many of you may have read I've been breeding/selecting sustainable meatbirds for the past several years crossing Del Roo on NH Hens with fair success. Late fall 2023 Mycoplasma SV raged through my flocks with 90% surviving after antibiotic treatments. Not sure of the origin but me and vet believe wild birds. Unfortunately survivors are lifelong carriers for Mycoplasma SV even through their eggs. Although meat and eggs would be consumable I made the decision to depopulate all the birds rather than maintain Mycoplasma SV in the breed stock passing to their progeny. Sourcing replacement stock starting over was at best a crap shoot. Knowing hatcheries rarely select for any trits if any I decided to source Del/NH chicks from three hatcheries. To give you an idea of the poor meatbird prospects - I ordered 105 total birds and culled at 6 and 10wks, processing 24 WR, selected 15 Del/NH breeding candidates with final cull at 20wk resulting in 1 Del Roo, 1NH Roo, 4NH Hens, 2WR Hens and 1Del Hen. Speaks volumes about potential meat bird breed stock available. It's a lot of record keeping, weighing, culling, processing chickens.
Of the 25+1 Wht Rangers I held back 2 of the hens that were smaller and slighter body mass that are with NH Roo and NH Hens. The Del Roo is with Wht Rock (layers). Late Jan/early Feb I plan to swap Roos - NH Roo with Wht Rocks and 1 NH Hen/1 WR Hen and the Del Roo with 4 NH/1 WR. Hopefully this will produce a WRxNH and WRxDel hybrid hens as potential breed stock to cross on Del Roo as my meat bird program. I'm worn out with all the numbers of chicks to cull/raise for a handful of breed stock. I'd like to cut back to just a layer flock and one breeding flock with single Del Roo. I achieve best hybrid vigor with DelxNH and because the Del Roo passes his feathering to offspring they are very easy to process. NH are heavy feathered with massive pin feathers - even with a plucker they're still a chore to process. NH Roos produce too much variability. I select for broad body, deep chest and have found best breed stock are the short stocky type. Same for hens. I've always kept Wht Ply Rock for layers - they lay 300 eggs. I have two really nice broad bodied deep chest WPR hens that I may also breed to Del.
Here's pics of Del and NH Roo
Here's #1 Wht Ranger Hen and #2 Wht Ranger Hen at 9months. #1 is better balanced and not as wide/short as #2. I'd still welcome eggs to hatch from both.
NH and Wht Ranger Hens for comparison. NH are still very large hens at 8months
Although I selected for layer type, two Wht Ply Rock rock are viable meatbird breeders especially #1 - she's that short stocky type I select for. Also here's #2 with rest of the layer flock - 6 hens total 3doz eggs/wk
Hope this helps some of you...Happy New Year and a "peaceful" 2025.
