No Bantams. I have a teenager that can and will eat a whole stuffed chicken on his own. I'm looking for a bit of everything, rotisserie, broiler, roaster, quarter.WLLady wrote:QR_BBPOST Good morning everyone!
Holy moly rain! the river is already at 9m-well, it WAS last night-i'm sure it's only getting higher! thankfully it floods out the OTHER side, and not onto my land, but i'm sure we'll have our fair share of erosion from this past couple of weeks of rains. My front field is floating and full of geese. My back field must have sharks in it because the horses are IN the barn...and they're never in the barn. but i love having the barn, it's nice and dry in there. and i love the sound of rain on the tin roofhad one of my cats refuse to come in last night. she sure was begging for in this morning at 6am! she's in, towelled off (because i don't need her getting the sofa wet) and safe and sleeping. the other 2 woke me up at 2am yowling for "IN!!!! NOW!!!!"
woke up to 4 turkey poults and 1 cornish hatched. and lots more peeping and pipping.....fingers crossed that moving them to the brooder didn't upset the humidity too badly...today is actually hatch day...so. and today sometime i pick up my sportsman from berryhill! (if we haven't all just gotten on an ark by then) yay! got a spot almost cleaned out in the front room for that and the hatcher-just need to run the vacuum around to get the dust bunnies cleaned up.
congrats sandy on the outdoors card. and KB, i hope stephen keeps getting better!
Sandy-it depends on what you want in a "meat bird". do you want a boiler? a roaster? a rotisserie bird? do you want to process them-aka breast, leg, wing take it apart into pieces and freeze bird? For me and my hubby, we did the frankenchicken cornish crosses ONCE. and ONLY ONCE. they taste amazing. they really do. but NEVER again. We now process all the extra cockerels from my heritage (and non-heritage project) breeds. I really really like the size of the welsummer and barred rocks. and the boys are good and chunky at 18-22 weeks. I'm growing them out past that quite often to select a few to carry on breeding with, so there's no shortage of boys around my place. they make a respectable roaster. they're a little big on the rotisserie on the bbq, but if i want a bird specifically for that i could process earlier (around 16 weeks). since i have dark cornish i would be pretty tempted, but i need all those birds right now for generating chicks...they're a wonderfully compact meaty bird. but they are the proverbial PITA to hatch and raise. they're not quite as dumb as turkeys, but pretty darned close. i would say my favorites for us are barred rocks or barred rock cross boys. rhodebar and welbar boys have nice big size too, and it's been tricky getting good "proper" colour on them so i get lots of extra boys there.....they dress out to 5-6 pounds at 22 weeks or so. if you wanted bigger then maybe jersey giants....but i personally will never grow cornish anythings for the freezer again, either the crosses or the frankenchicken type cornishes. i have enough trouble with the dark cornish for chicks. if you want a smaller bird though i hear that the bantam cornish aren't as picky as the standard. but i have zero experience with bantams.
Cockerels. Aren't they tough? The Columbian Rock roo we ate, well, I felt like the flinstones trying to eat it or gnawing on it is a better description.
Barred rocks. You mean cockerels? Hmmm, interesting. Never thought of them as a dual purpose bird.
Ok, you've given me plenty to think about!!! Thank you.
Pet quality wheaten/blue wheaten ameraucanas, welsummers, barred rocks, light brown leghorns; Projects on the go: rhodebars, welbars