Best Meat to Time to Cost ratio with Buff Orpingtons

[Carter Martin]

I have some BO roosters and will probably want to butcher a few to all of them. They are about 21 or 22 weeks old right now or close to 5 months. And one or so is starting to crow. I have read that BOs take about 6-8 months to mature. Can anyone advise me on the best time to butcher BOs to get the most meat for my money? Should I wait till they seem basically fully mature? Or is it best to butcher them before they are fully mature?

Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks
Carter

 

[Molpet]

Depends on how you want to cook them
@homeschoolin momma how old were your lav orps I helped @Faraday40 with.

 

[Carter Martin]

I think BOs will generally be ready to butcher between 5 and 9 months of age.

 

[homeschoolin momma]

Depends on how you want to cook them
@homeschoolin momma how old were your lav orps I helped @Faraday40 with.

They were hatched on July 5th I believe. So I believe they were 5 mo almost to the day. I do not know how much they weighed after processing.

 

[Faraday40]

They were hatched on July 5th I believe. So I believe they were 5 mo almost to the day. I do not know how much they weighed after processing.

You beat me to answer! LOL

5-6 months is good. That's about when they start crowing & chasing hens. It also depends on the season. Fall is great. No one wants to butcher on a hot summer day or in the middle of winter. Butchering in late fall is a way to make more room in your coop for winter.

 

[Saltlifexo95]

I have some BO roosters and will probably want to butcher a few to all of them. They are about 21 or 22 weeks old right now or close to 5 months. And one or so is starting to crow. I have read that BOs take about 6-8 months to mature. Can anyone advise me on the best time to butcher BOs to get the most meat for my money? Should I wait till they seem basically fully mature? Or is it best to butcher them before they are fully mature?

Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks
Carter

Hear me out… BO=friend, not food. jk.. I wouldn’t mind eating some mean chickens.

 

[Geena]

I have some BO roosters and will probably want to butcher a few to all of them. They are about 21 or 22 weeks old right now or close to 5 months. And one or so is starting to crow. I have read that BOs take about 6-8 months to mature. Can anyone advise me on the best time to butcher BOs to get the most meat for my money? Should I wait till they seem basically fully mature? Or is it best to butcher them before they are fully mature?

Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks
Carter

If they are starting to crow the time is now.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Can anyone advise me on the best time to butcher BOs to get the most meat for my money?

Some of that depends on how much it is costing you to keep them. If you are buying most of what they eat now might not be a bad time. If they forage for most of what they eat you might be able to wait a while.

There are a lot of qualifications to this because each individual cockerel can be different. I'm talking about dual purpose cockerels in general, not specifically BO. On average I think they have kind of a growth spurt starting around 14 weeks and lasting until about 23 weeks. They'll still gain weight after that but it's at a slower rate, if volume of meat is your goal it may not be worth what you are feeding them.

Some are still going to be fairly sexually immature, you can tell that by the size of their sexual parts (testes) when you butcher them. These are usually the smaller ones. I don't know if they still have a growth spurt in them or not. My goals are different from yours and these are usually the first ones I butcher.

You could weigh them weekly and chart their growth. See what the sweet spot is for your flock.

 

[Sally PB]

Hear me out… BO=friend, not food. jk.. I wouldn’t mind eating some mean chickens.

My BO roo is the best one of the three I got. And I still call him butthead. The other two were culled at 4 months. He's almost 2 years old, and I'm still waiting for him to "mature."

 

[Isadora]

My BO roo is the best one of the three I got. And I still call him butthead. The other two were culled at 4 months. He's almost 2 years old, and I'm still waiting for him to "mature."

When I was a kid we had a killer buff Orpington named George. He traumatized me.