Egg and meat production in poultry

[Beekissed]

I'm not a bit like the dedicated breeders out there, though I had sorta, kinda had a knee jerk start in doing so, I quickly found it it didn't suit my style of life nor my style of flock tending.

Now I do what I've always done....keep the best rooster and hens in the flock, breed those, cull out those that don't lay like I expect nor have the conformation I'm looking for. All the breeders call that flock breeding and say it yields spotty results that you can't really duplicate because you don't know what hen produced the best of the best, but I figure if I keep doing it I'll end up with the best of the best that I can produce here and that's good enough for me.

That means I'll be getting the highest egg performance and the biggest meat yields, while the WRs still resemble the standard of the breed, which is enough for me. Anything more than that is just too much work and fussing about for my needs.

A lot of good chicken genetics can come from an old lady and a single chicken flock, so you all wanting to create your own chicken for meat and eggs could go down history like Nettie Metcalf and her Buckeyes....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckeye_chicken

The Buckeye was first bred and developed in 1896, by a Warren, Ohio resident named Nettie Metcalf.[5] They are the only American breed of chicken known to have been developed by a woman, despite the fact that women were customarily given charge of the household poultry flock throughout much of U.S. history.[6] Metcalf crossbred Barred Plymouth Rocks, Buff Cochins, and some black breasted red games to produce the Buckeye. Her goal was a functional breed that could produce well in the bitter Midwest winters. Contrary to popular belief the Buckeye breed was created before the Rhode Island Red breed and Metcalf actually sent birds to the RIR breeders for them to improve their breed.[7]

 

[NH Homesteader]

I'm getting mighty irritated with hatchery birds. The only birds I've ever had that were tough enough for NH winters without babying are my Dominiques I got from a local breeder. They are amazing birds. We'll see how the Cornishes do, they seem OK so far. The Dorkings are not looking so cold hardy thus far. Actually the roo is currently MIA, and the hen looks miserable.

I'm not a good judge of the looks of the bird - breed standards and all that. That's why I could never try to breed a better chicken, I haven't the slightest idea what I'm looking at! Lol I have a hard enough time with my goats, and I have picture cheat sheets of how to evaluate udders lol.

 

[Beekissed]

Most people feel like a bird with a peacomb makes it winter hardy but that's a huge misconception. It only means their comb is not likely to get frostbitten and that's all. We get temps to teens below here a couple of times a year, though it's not sustained for long like you folks up north, but the large, fleshy combs of the WR rooster never get frosted due to how the coop is set up and preventative measures on his skin.

Winter hardy is more than just a comb, it's feather depth/quality and down loft, it's how they store fat~most breeds store it internally, if at all~but those that store a layer under the skin are much like animals that store blubber to keep warm..they keep warmer, lay in the winter and consume less to stay warm.

This 5 yr old WR hen had been eating foraged feed almost entirely, with just a few mouths of supplemental feed each day(1 and 1/2 c. per day for 14 chickens to share) but she still packed on enormous fat stores under the skin, on her carcass, in her abdomen, etc. And, to my surprise, the roosters of this breed do this type of fat storage in the fall also....that shocked me, as I've killed a lot of roosters in my day without once having seen fat stores like you'd find on an old hen, but I'm seeing it in these WR cockerels and WR mix cockerels at butcher time.

And, even more wonderful in this breed, that fat is also marbled throughout the meat, giving it extra flavor, moistness, tenderness upon eating.

You can see the golden color of the meat in this half carcass of a WR hen compared to the meat of the whole RIR rooster carcass....that's tiny fat cells throughout the meat.

It also has to do with metabolic rates...a slower metabolism tolerates cold better, a high metabolism not so much. A lot of good DP breeds have been bred away from that due to hatchery focus on quick and high production in the DP breeds, which was never their focus.

It's also a set of behaviors wherein they know how to flock better~huddle closer on the roost, how to tuck their heads under their wings in severe cold, how to keep their toes covered on the roosts, how to remain calm and conserve heat during the day, etc.

Invariably when cold hardiness is discussed on BYC, people always discuss combs and that's about it. If that were the only consideration a person could just dub the rooster's combs and wattles while they were young and stick with their chosen breed. Cold hardiness is about so much more than comb size, just like with us humans~it's about your metabolic rate, your body fat, the warmth of your clothing and also your survival skills.

 

[treerooted]

Love it Bee

Just as a side question - if we pluck only, and don't know the fat content of our birds - will that effect cooking methods, i.e. could I unknowing cook it incorrectly even using low and slow? Or for older birds should we always skin?

Also it's so tough to know how a breed is going to perform given the different quality traits; that's why I figured I'd try a few. Great pointers for winter hardiness, I can't wait to see how my birds do this winter. Though, the white leghorns I had last year did just fine and I wasn't really sure what to expect, but there are so many different factors that can change from year to year as well!

 

[Beekissed]

Love it Bee

Just as a side question - if we pluck only, and don't know the fat content of our birds - will that effect cooking methods, i.e. could I unknowing cook it incorrectly even using low and slow? Or for older birds should we always skin?

Also it's so tough to know how a breed is going to perform given the different quality traits; that's why I figured I'd try a few. Great pointers for winter hardiness, I can't wait to see how my birds do this winter. Though, the white leghorns I had last year did just fine and I wasn't really sure what to expect, but there are so many different factors that can change from year to year as well!

Yes, you could unknowingly cook it incorrectly, which is why so very many people, having tasted "real" chicken after eating commercially raised chicken all their lives, proclaim it tough, dry, stringy, chewy and gamy in flavor. Much like folks who don't know how to butcher out a deer or preserve it will bound and declare that all deer meat is gamy and tough, so must be soaked in brine water to remove those factors.

I don't think skinning has anything to do with age, but in how you normally eat your meat. If you bake,broil, slow cook it or even fry it, you'll want your skin. If you eat it skinless or you can it, you don't need the skin unless you'd want it for making stock.

It's always good to try many different breeds of your chosen traits so you can decide on one that suits YOUR needs, your environment and your management practices. That's how I hit on the WRs and the BAs as my chosen go to birds, with a few others as "also ran" type birds. I tried many different breeds down through the years and those that stood out in laying and meat performance, in how they tolerated my climate, how they did under my management style and their temperament all factored in when choosing my favorite breeds. Each person's individual style in life often will factor in how they choose a breed when it's all said and done.

BAs have impressed me for many years in many ways and the old style RIRs have always been a favorite of mine, though one can't really find those from a hatchery source any longer. But the first time I had WRs they all blew the others out of the water as a DP breed and I fell in love with them. Yes, that's often how people will describe their feelings about their chosen breed or breeds...it's a love affair of sorts.

Their regal bearing as they move was like watching chicken royalty, their sparkling cleanliness when other white birds look horrible, their tough, reliable, calm, sweet and docile nature~but suddenly fierce in motherhood~really impressed me, and how hard working and savvy they were on range, gaining big bodies on little feed. Even their feather feel...stroking the backs of one is like touching silk while the other chicken's backs felt like touching..well..feathers.

Then when I lifted one of them at the same time I lifted a bird of seemingly same size(BO) but different breed and found the meat difference...one was like lifting a 5 lb barbell and the other like a 15 lb barbell of the same size but vastly different in weight. You could distinctly feel the difference and when you got all the skin off of both of them, you could SEE the difference, clear down to how fine the meat fibers were, making them more densely packed into framework of the bird.

I was impressed. I still loved my BAs and RIRs dearly, but the WRs blew them out of the water as a DP bird and they suited my nature to a T, so that's how it all began with the WRs.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Completely unrelated side note- was just cruising Craigslist and thought of you Bee- I saw about 50 free laying hens, 2-3 years old and 140 hens for $1/piece! You would make out great up here! Of course it's kind of cold for butchering right now...

@treerooted I've heard leghorns do awful in the cold but I know multiple people who have had good luck with them in winter. Funny.

 

[milkmansdaughter]

I'm just getting to this thread. My flock is a very mixed flock, with practically no planning whatsoever. (funny how when you start, you THINK you did a LOT of planning, only to look back later and see how little you have done!)

Since this is the beginning of a new year, I thought I'd do a recap of our first year with chickens. Let me start by saying, chickens were not my idea, and I didn't ever think I'd see them as much more than a means to an end. I had no particular interest in them at all, and could not tell you even one breed in the beginning. I was still living 900 miles away waiting for our son to finish the school year, so the beginning of the chicken project was completely on my husband until June.

So, we got our first birds on April 3rd. They were 8-12 weeks old when we got them (so born in January 2017). Among that first batch were three Buff Orpingtons, a Partridge Rock, and 4EE's. We later added 2 Barred Rocks, 1 RIR, 1 lavender Orpington (we think), 1 BA, 2 EE roosters, and 2 older (4+ years) hens from a friend of unknown breed. That's our current 17. (We had originally gotten 21 birds, and kept 12, later culled 4 of the 12 we kept. The others went to friends, who later gave us several others.)

When we first started, we kept all of our birds in 2 small coops (4 to a coop). They all got layer pellets, dry, plus whatever they could get from the grass in the pen.

By July we were averaging 6 eggs a day from our original 8 birds. We added 7 more birds to the flock on July 20th, but most were still young, and two were young roosters. Three were old ladies, all over 4 years and at the end of their producing years. Only 1 of the 7 added to the eggs production in the fall. We moved the coops and the birds to a fenced area that was 35x50 feet, with netting over the entire area. We divided the pens to keep the new younger birds and the young roosters separate. The three oldest birds were also in their own area apart from the rest in an 16x16 foot fenced area. Egg production stayed about the same until the end of August.

In September, we added 2 RIR and 2BA and 2 BR to the flock, but 1 of our RIR, and 1 BA got sick with a respiratory illness, and were culled, but it just about took out the whole flock. Most of the chickens went through a time of not eating well, and were quite thin. Egg production stayed around 6 a day until the 3rd week of Sept, when it fell sharply to 3 a day the third week, then to less than 2 a day the last week of Sept. We went from 21 birds down to our current 17.

I didn't keep good records in Oct, but do not have a record of any eggs from Oct 5th until Dec 9th. (I was out of the state from Oct 6th until the 21st.) By the time I got back, the chickens had feathers everywhere and were quite thin. We thought we would lose the whole flock, but didn't cull at the time because they were so thin (should have culled the whole lot of them, but since we wouldn't get any meat off of any of them, we decided to try FF first.) I started occasionally free ranging the chickens when I got back, and switched to full free ranging and started Fermented Feed on Oct 31st. We had no eggs in November, but LOTS of feathers everywhere. But the days were still warm and the chickens really added bulk and feathers in November, probably tripling (or more) their weight on FF and free ranging. They started ranging very close to the original pen when I first let them out, and always stayed in a bunch. Now they freely range over several acres, are cold tolerant (this is our coldest day so far at 17*), and go through about 1/2 the feed they did when they were thin. Today, even in the cold, they are all over the property, come running from all directions if I step outside, and are thick and fully feathered, and HEAVY.

We are now averaging about 7 eggs a day, after getting our first eggs again around Dec 9th, a day after a BIG snowstorm.)

I didn't save any eggs from before FF, but had to get a dozen from a store a few weeks age. So here is a picture of a store bought XL egg next to one of our own L eggs. The store bought egg is on the left, and has a much smaller, pale yolk.

(Edited to upload pictures from my phone.)

So, that's my recap of 2017. Things are looking up for 2018!

 

[Beekissed]

LU, you have some really pretty birds in that flock, very healthy and well feathered! Those eggs speak volumes, don't they? Which would anyone rather eat?

 

[Hinotori]

I have followed this thread, but just don't have much to imput since I just breed silkies and they are bantams.

I do keep track of who lays the most eggs in their non-broody times and take that into account when picking breeding groups. I had a random size mutation happen and have been breeding a few larger silkies.

 

[Beekissed]

Well...if you own chickens, long about now your egg production is increasing. Seems like every year it hinges on just a couple of days...one day I'm getting 2-3 that I've been getting all winter long, then the next day everyone decides to add to the nest.

Slowly but surely, everyone who will lay in the spring cycle will start laying, shells that were a tad thin when they started will firm up, yolks will even out, shells will stop having those little weird imperfections they sometimes have at the beginning of a laying cycle and then eggs are in abundance....when that happens it's easy to forget who didn't lay in the winter months or which hen didn't even lay a bit after summer molt.

But, just because they lay in the spring, it doesn't make them a good layer all year round, so I watch cycles all year and note how quickly they get back to laying after raising young, after molt, during the winter, etc. By fall I've usually got a good idea on who will be taken out of the flock and eaten, thinning the numbers I'll be taking into the winter.

I'll generally keep them in the flock all spring and summer because food is in abundance out there, so I'm not really feeding slackers too much, plus the rooster will need good mating opportunities when his really fertile girls are mothering a brood.

Sometimes you'll have a hen that doesn't even lay steady in the spring, be they old or young, and those are an automatic cull....they really serve no purpose as they won't even be fertile enough to provide the rooster mating when the good hens are on the nest. Sometimes I'll go ahead and cull those birds in the spring, putting them in the freezer until it's time to do the fall cull and canning.

Why don't I leave them in the flock until fall? Hens who are not laying steadily even in cycles are more likely to develop laying issues when they do lay, they are more likely to carry or be carrying parasites, more likely to be loners and have/create problems within the flock, and I'd prefer to kill her and keep the meat rather than she have problems and have to be killed for them, then not getting to keep her meat.

I've got high hopes for this season's hatch, as I'm planning a heavy cull of my existing flock come fall. Last year this flock laid better than any flock I've ever owned before, but there are a few slackers in the bunch that will need to be removed if that will continue.