Chickens for meat

[curly_kate]

We're getting ready to embark on our first round of raising meat birds. DH wants Cornish Rock Crosses, but they sound kinda like Frankenchickens and I don't know that I want to go that route. I can be patient and wait another month for some fresh chicken. What breeds do you recommend?

 

[ksalvagno]

We did our first meat chicken experiment this year. Tractor Supply was at the end of their chick days and we got the chicks very cheap. We ended up with 8 cornish X and 10 unknown breed. Only 4 of the cornish X survived to butcher and looking back I think part of the problem was the other type of chicken. The unknowns ended up being Leghorn and Leghorn crosses. What a pain and very small. We ended up with 7 roosters and 3 hens. The hens were so small that we decided just to keep them for egg laying and added them to our other hens.

Last weekend we decided to move the girls to the hen house. What a bad mistake. The chickens were 18 weeks old. Leghorns are flighty and skittish so it was fun getting the girls to begin with. Well, we upset the roosters and when I went back in to finish taking care of them, they attacked. Someone else on this forum had said to let them grow out to 20 weeks but on Monday I made the call and took them to a processor on Tuesday. They are now in our freezer. The Leghorns are very small compared to the Cornish X.

After all is said and done, I wasn't happy with either type. There are benefits to being done with the chickens at 8 or 9 weeks but they do grow grotesquely fast. I'm defrosting one of them now so we will see how they taste. I do have meat in the freezer but it was not enjoyable at all to take care of them.

A girlfriend of mine is raising Plymouth Rock roosters. She said you only have to keep them for 12-13 weeks which I don't think is bad and they can free range. She also said that so far they have been a joy to take care of but she has only had them for about 4 weeks. I will see what she thinks of them at 12 weeks. There are also the Freedom Rangers which are free ranging meat birds that I have heard are nice.

 

[SKR8PN]

I don't know what breed they are, but we raised what Meyers Hatchery calls "Broilers". Seven weeks and they are ready to butcher. Some of the ugliest chickens I have every seen but they sure do taste good!
The whole chickens you buy in the supermarket, look like yellow jello, where these broilers have very a white and very firm meat.
You can call them Frankenchickens if you want to, I prefer to call them tasty.

http://www.meyerhatchery.com/get_list_5.htm

 

[Wifezilla]

People on BYC who wanted to get away from the cornish crosses seem to be really happy with the "Freedom Rangers"

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

i'll second the freedom rangers.. or ideal's "Red Broilers" which arent as creepy as the cornish x's...

here's what we came up with (warning! pix!!!):
http://adventuresinthegoodland.blogspot.com/2010/05/creepy-meat-tastes-like-chicken.html

that all being said... dang... with our turkeys not flourishing like they did last year we might just cowboy up and get some more "creepy meat" chickens that will be ready in 7 or 8 weeks as we get closer to fall. we HATED them alive.. but being in the freezer...well.. they are kinda growin' on me.

you might want to split the diff and just get some of each? a lot of hatcheries will do a small order (for a fee).

 

[Buster]

http://www.jmhatchery.com/free-range-broiler/colored-range-chicks/prod_5.html

They are hybrids and still grow pretty fast, but just enough longer than the XBird to make them more tasty. Much more humane genetics, IMO.

If you are looking for an actual breed, we like standard Dark Cornish for meat due to breast size.

I will never raise a Cornish X.

 

[Beekissed]

I had great success with the CX this year...my first time growing them. I free ranged them with the rest of my flock and they developed nicely.

Yeah, they don't act like normal chickens when they get some size on them, but when they were smaller they acted just like all the rest of my chickens...they foraged well, loved following the tiller for all the worms and bugs and they were nice and quiet.

Until feeding time. Then they would get into a frenzy and crowd out my regular flock but I would solve that next time by keeping them and ranging them separately.

They really loved the free range life and had developed very strong bones and they had healthy organs.

I didn't feed high protein feeds nor did I feed free choice. They had to walk a steep ramp to get inside the coop and they had to walk outside again and across the orchard for water. This seems to have served them well. I didn't lose one bird and none of them ailed a day...two even got severely injured early on and healed completely and quickly.

I can tell you this...I harvested 100 lbs. of meat from 20 birds and the processing was the easiest processing I'd ever done. Everything on these birds was so tender that there was no effort to pluck, the joints cut easily, the feathers and entrails had no strong smells....it was rather pleasant.

And the meat??? It is so tender and juicy, so flavorful...nothing whatsoever like the birds in the stores. These birds were clean, had clarity of flavor...almost like a wild turkey tastes. Excellent!

I will raise more next spring for sure. I'll do it a little differently but they will still free range, they will still only get fed once a day, and they will still get plenty of exercise, green forage and good living.

No Frankenchickens here, folks!

 

[PamsPride]

I don't know what breed they are, but we raised what Meyers Hatchery calls "Broilers". Seven weeks and they are ready to butcher. Some of the ugliest chickens I have every seen but they sure do taste good!
The whole chickens you buy in the supermarket, look like yellow jello, where these broilers have very a white and very firm meat.
You can call them Frankenchickens if you want to, I prefer to call them tasty.

http://www.meyerhatchery.com/get_list_5.htm

We have done these same birds and I did not find them gross at all. Of course we have a HUGE pen for them but we usually do like 50 at a time.
I agree...they sure do taste good!!

 

[PunkinPeep]

The main reason i don't do CX, besides that i also have kind of a frankenchicken feel for them, is that i can't produce them. I want to produce my own food from the chickens i have instead of having to buy the chicks from someone else each year.

You have to get used to thinking a little differently about chicken, but we're really enjoying our dual purpose breeds. We've butchered some when they were small and some when they were older, and we're getting used to the different flavors of the different ages and how to prepare them best for the table.

 

[Buster]

The main reason i don't do CX,

I have about 50.

Well, maybe that's a stretch, but not by much.

Aside from my number one problem with them (inhumane genetics), they are products of a factory farm system. My biggest reason for raising my own meat is to get away from CAFO systems. Buying chicks that are products of such a system kinda defeats that purpose.