Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Good Morning All,
As this is my first time raising barred rocks I'm curious of others experience. We have done Leghorns for meat in the past so we know what they taste like. My guess is that the barred will be ready at about 18 weeks but I am curious what the taste and size diff will be. Anyone got any thoughts or experience with that?

A lot will depend on free range or not. Mine free range in a paddock and have more texture. Also how do you finish them. I don't finish but some on here do corn etc. I'd be interested in the answer too.

Just curious , Leghorns are the ultimate layer breed not usually raised for meat, any reason why you had them for meat ?
I would think any dual purpose bird would be a better feed converter then Leghorns, the taste will mostly depend on what you feed them.

Ontario Chick wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 07, 2019 5:26 pm

Just curious , Leghorns are the ultimate layer breed not usually raised for meat, any reason why you had them for meat ?
I would think any dual purpose bird would be a better feed converter then Leghorns, the taste will mostly depend on what you feed them.

We just asked for broilers and thats what they sold us at the feed mill, lol. We had just moved to the country and didnt have a clue so leghorns it was. 30 years later we thought we'd give it another go.

Killerbunny wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 07, 2019 11:54 am

A lot will depend on free range or not. Mine free range in a paddock and have more texture. Also how do you finish them. I don't finish but some on here do corn etc. I'd be interested in the answer too.

They free range some and live a comfy life, lol. Free feed at all times, havent given finishing any thought yet, must look into that.

I weighed one of the BR cockerels at 10 weeks and he was 1.45kg, about 3 lbs. Looks good to me!

i process all my extra cockerels and the barred rocks actually dress out quite nicely-both the boys and the girls at about 28 weeks of age. i usually am processing the boys about 20 weeks just because they get unruly and start terrorizing the girls. they're a bit smaller, and mostly just breast and leg is all the meat on them at that point. at a year though they are simply too stringy! LOL.
I'm thinking the first ones you got meat birds were likely a cross. leghorns in my hands aren't even worth processing at a year....there's nothing on them. i raise light brown leghorn and don't even bother processing them after they finish laying, we donate them to a home raw diet dog food person because they just grind the entire bird bones and all for the dogs. in my experience any bird that free ranges tastes better than a bird that doesn't LOL