White Rocks as DP?

[lizage]

I too, am leaning more and more towards white rocks for my first run at raising meat birds. For those of you who have raised them, at what age did you process? Thanks!

 

[johnsons-r-us]

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Thank you! LOVE THIS!

 

[johnsons-r-us]

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You make a great point. We have to start somewhere, and we can't always get anything but hatchery birds. I know where I live, unless I can get someone to send hatching eggs, which I get 50% or less hatch rates on, I hatchery stock is all that's out there within driving distance. And they're not bad birds by any means, especially if you're in it for eggs. But they are smaller if you want true dual purpose chickens. You do roll the dice. I have some hatchery BO hens and one, "Big Girl" has like an eating gene or something, she is over and above what the others are. After molting this year, is laying a Jumbo egg almost every day. But still not as big as my breeder quality orps.

So far as good quality Cornish, wow, good luck getting show quality or breeder quality in those. Especially if you don't live within driving distance of a breeder. But they *are* harder to raise than rocks or other breeds.

This just makes the decision easy! WRs it is! I was thinking of trying some hatching eggs, as I'm going to get a hovabator soon, but if I can't get that to work before spring, then I will order some hatchery WRs to get started. I don't care about show quality (or confirmation?), I just want big

 

[Beekissed]

This is a WR broody that adopted 20 CX chicks for me and brooded them up to my freezer in wonderful health and vigor. You should have seen her the first day with 40 little orange legs sticking out from under her!!! She fit over top of all those CX chicks for about a week....the first pic is their first time outside on the free range at approx. 2 1/2 weeks.

 

[johnsons-r-us]

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If only she could have pocessed them for you........

Wow! That's incredible. 40 little orange legs

you might have won 10,000 on funniest home videos for that one!

Where did you get your cx? And you let them free range? I keep seeing posts about messy clean ups and having to do so much care with them that I kind of thought "no way". This gives me hope that at some point I "may" try it. Still a bit of cold feet yet. Sounds like you had the perfect situation.

 

[Beekissed]

If you'll look in the meaty section under my name, you will find a thread about the whole experiment with my CX under my broody.....did from start to finish with pics of progress and then did pics of the processing~from chick to freezer in one thread.

My CX experiment was so simple, cheap and clean that I feel everyone should read that thread and copy it to their computer. It proves that it can be done without all the complicated feeding and lighting schedules and the end product is largely the same but with healthier meat that was raised in an easy breezy manner.

 

[johnsons-r-us]

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I appreciate the tip. Going there now......

 

[DanIndiana]

I agree about the hatchery bashing, but that said, does anyone know of any good WR breeders? I would be curious to see if there was a significant difference.

 

[al6517]

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Here is a good example of a SQ bred White Rock rooster, as you can see he's head over heals above a hatchery bred bird. This rooster was 2 1/2 ft tall at maturity and I produced some exceptional offspring from him that were true heritage DP birds and could be shown and be proud to have out in your range. Such a majestic breed.

PM me for the breeders info.

 

[pinback]

i'm thinking about getting white rocks for dual purpose birds. what hatchery are you guys using?

i notice that hoovers hatchery has them for a decent price, and was thinking about ordering from them.