Hello from the UK!

[Bex]

I had not thought about that as a way of obtaining chickens for meat. I'll have to see if there are any commercial chicken places near me when I move and see if they'll sell me their roosters. Right, off to google commercial chicken processors in France!

 

[bobm]

Food for thought... The problem with the Leghorn roosters being processed at 16-18 weeks as being the size of the KFC chicken may sound good, but the problem arises is that the KFC chicken is a 5-6 week old Cornish X . AS you know that in business TIME is MONEY ... the difference between 16 weeks and 5 weeks is 11 weeks or the difference between 18 weeks and 6 weeks is 12 weeks, which translates to 11 to 12 weeks extra weeks of feed ( feed conversion rate of feed to meat is quite poor, so costs more money) and your extra labor which you can put to better and more useful use that is more profitable. Not to mention the 3 am seranade from the 100 Leghorn roosters for about 8-9 weeks which your neighbors just may not take to kindly either.

 

[Smart Red]

Well said, @bobm. But that was way back in the stone age and the roos, being culls were next to nothing in cost. Yes, the feed was a bit more than with Cornish, but they weren't as well known back then either. No one complained except DH and he didn't have to process them anyway.

 

[Ridgerunner]

If you can manage to let them forage for a lot of their food you can cut feed costs a lot. Still, even the dual purpose breeds are not nearly as efficient as the commercial chickens as far as food to meat conversion. No other chickens can touch the hybrid egg layers either for food to egg conversion, though Leghorns are not bad. We can't touch the commercial operations for efficiency in meat or eggs because of their economy of scale and their specializing unless ours can forage a whole lot, but I like the meat I raise and the eggs I gather. It's worth it to me.

 

[bobm]

Foraging for food may sound economical, but the real truth is ... that comes at the cost of ingesting larger amount of food which may or may not be nutritionally balanced due to irregular availability of balanced nutrients or just plain food preference therefore gleaning less return of meat or eggs in a longer time frame while the commercial food delivers a much more nutrient balance with each bite, so gives much better feed convertion rate of feed to meat / eggs.

 

[Bex]

I had planned on a happy medium. Letting them free range for their food but topping up with commercial food and then finishing on corn.
I'm not keen on getting the commercial meat chickens as they don't really fit with my self sufficient philosophy. I understand that they are cheaper to rear as they' produce more meat in less time, however as I understand it you cannot breed from them as they simply don't last long enough to lay. I've seen all sort of warnings not to let them get too old as their legs break under their weight and they die from heart failure. It's no life for a chicken as I see it and as I'm going to be slaughtering them myself, I'd rather know that I gave them the best life I could.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Of course how well they do with letting them forage for part of their diet will depend on the quality of the forage. The model I'm using is the small farm I grew up on. If they have enough different grasses and weeds, grass and weed seeds, various creepy crawlies, and dead vegetation or other animal poop like cow or horse to scratch in they can be extremely self-sufficient. Predator pressure plays a big part too. If you can't allow them to forage because of losses to predators then it won't work.

We never fed our chickens in the good weather months. They fed themselves. In winter we did supplement their feed with corn we'd raised ourselves, but we didn't have a lot of snow so even in winter they found a fair portion of their food. Some of that was from the hay we fed the cows and horses or by scratching in the poop. During the good weather months our kitchen wastes were fed to the pigs but after we butchered the hogs in fall the kitchen wastes were thrown where the chickens could get to them.

We had a barnyard mix of various breeds that had some game mixed in. Every five or six years Dad would bring in a dozen Dominique or New Hampshire from the Co-op and bring them into the genetic mix, keeping a rooster from those breeds so it was not just pure games.

Ours were not show chickens. You need to feed show chickens special to get them that big and the feathers that shiny. They were not raised for commercial purposes. They were only to provide eggs and meat for a family with 5 kids. We ate eggs for breakfast every day of the year. Even when Mom made pancakes I'd usually have an easy over egg on top. We followed the same pattern that had been followed on small farms like that for thousands of years. The hens would hatch out and raise chicks in the spring and summer and we would eat a lot of chickens late summer and fall to get back to the numbers we overwintered. The chickens were not huge lumbering beasts but Mom could get a meal for five kids and two adults out of one of them. Neck, back, and gizzard were added to the normal parts you can get at KFC. It is surprising how much meat you can get off a neck if you really want to. We never butchered and preserved chickens. None went in the freezer. When Mom wanted a chicken she'd tell me and I'd go catch one, kill and pluck it, and give it to her. They were not aged for days in the refrigerator, she cooked it that day. And they were delicious. We'd have the numbers of the chickens down to where Dad wanted them about the time we butchered the hogs which provided meat for winter, spring, and early summer. Our calves were all sold, not eaten, as we needed the cash. Chicken and pork were our meats with occasional fish we caught or game we shot as additional treats.

Of course it depends on how rough your winters are and the quality of forage but lets do some quick math. How efficient is it to get eggs and meat for your family when you provide none of their feed for the good weather months and just provide corn that you raised yourself in the bad weather months as a supplement versus buying feed for them year around. That math is not real hard for me to do.

Most people can't do this. They don't have quality of forage, nice enough year around weather, or the predator pressure is just too great. But if you can allow them to forage for a portion of their food you can cut your feed costs.

 

[baymule]

I have been researching chicken breeds and what I have decided on is the Delaware breed. I'll probably add another breed, maybe cross breed for my own sex links and just have fun with growing my own.

 

[bobm]

Ridge... your chicken / hog farm model works quite well in areas of adequate rainfall. However, in the Mediteranian climate areas and the arid West not so much. On my ranch in Central Cal. for the last 7 years, we average 6.5" of rainfall a year starting in early Dec, to mid February with very little ( like a trace or moisture from fog or dew ) before or after that time. NO rain to speak of the rest of the year. All grasses go to seed and die by early to late March . Since bugs depend on growing vegetation for food and the only green plants have long since turned brown until the next Dec. What is a chicken to eat other than commercial feed ? We have so many coyotes and loose dogs running around as well as racoons, possums, skunks, bobcats, fox, hawks etc. that the only chicken houses on ranches are sitting empty and have been abandoned for years. I have learned to raise the Cornish X chickens quite successfully in the in and out fashion in 8 weeks in VERY SECURE housing. Then recently I have switched to raising them to only 35 days as 1.5 - 2 pound game hens. Oh , Bex ... what concerns you have heard ... the Cornish X are a terminal cross meant to be processed and consumed at 35 days for "game hens", or 6-8 weeks of age for fryers , NOT to breed on. (Oh, if I do want to breed my own , and I have. I manage to raise my CornishX to breed on quite well , but one has to follow very strict proceedures ). While their parent lines are quite productive as MILLIONS of their offspring are consumed daily. The things that one hears of broken legs , heart failure, etc. are due to lack of practicing of proper management protocols of the chicken keeper.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Just for fun, these show how the parents and grandparents of the broilers are raised. It corrected a lot of my misconceptions on the broilers.