Egg Layers, Meat Chickens, and Making New Chicks

[FunClucks]

Typically what you'll find is chicken breeds are optimized for different things. You have egg laying breeds (white leghorn is the best example) that lay up to 300+ eggs a year. Then you have meat chickens that are bred to put on as much weight as fast as possible and only live for about two months (cornish cross). In the middle, you have dual purpose birds that lay some amount of eggs ~200-250/yr and put on a fair amount of meat by 4-6 months, or up to a year (Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire, many others, often known as heritage breeds).

If you raise the white leghorn as a meat bird, you may be disappointed - the amount of feed and time needed to raise it to a processed weight of about 3-4 lbs is significantly more than it would be for a meat bird to reach that same weight. If you try to have a meat bird that lays eggs, you may be disappointed if you're looking for leghorn type egg production - it's not bred to do that.

However, if your main goal is eggs, you can raise a flock of white leghorns just fine, hatch out your own eggs, and eat any extra cockerels. Hatch rate of males vs. females can be all over the place, but over a large number of hatches generally works out to 50% male and 50% female. That's a lot of roosters you'll need to do something with. You can raise them to 4-6 months old and have a decent meal out of them. Even better if they can get a good portion of their food from free ranging, but rooster bachelor flocks or bachelor pads are a thing that many folks do while growing out the cockerels.

If you're looking for sustainable meat flock, there are a handful of dual purpose birds that have been bred for meat and as much eggs as they can manage. A few examples are Freedom Rangers and New Hampshires from Freedom Ranger hatchery, Delaware Broilers from Murray McMurray, and there are a number of other birds that breed true that I'm just not aware of. Heritage breeds can be bred for different things, so the particular strain you get does matter if you're looking for one thing or another.

No other breed is as time and cost effective to raise for meat as the Cornish Cross - look on the forum here - a number of people have tried. But it is a terminal cross that comes with its own special management requirements. If you can find a great deal on CX chicks and raise them in bulk, this will be the least time and money option. But if you're going for self-sufficiency, having to buy chicks every year, regardless of their price, isn't it.

Good luck figuring things out!

 

[NatJ]

Typically what you'll find is chicken breeds are optimized for different things.

Very good point.

if your main goal is eggs, you can raise a flock of white leghorns just fine, hatch out your own eggs, and eat any extra cockerels. Hatch rate of males vs. females can be all over the place, but over a large number of hatches generally works out to 50% male and 50% female. That's a lot of roosters you'll need to do something with. You can raise them to 4-6 months old and have a decent meal out of them.

I agree, that can work well.

Or you can raise them to about 8 weeks, and butcher a bunch of small birds. (Some people do eat quail. 8 week Leghorn cockerels are likely to be bigger than quail.) If you get fast at butchering, it is sometimes more efficient to process them young instead of providing a lot more feed over several months to get a bit more meat. And butchering young means they are less inclined to try fighting each other, or pestering females with attempts to mate, and you don't hear nearly so much crowing, plus the meat is more likely to be tender.

It's also possible to run a meatier breed of rooster with Leghorn hens to get chicks that grow a bit bigger than pure Leghorn chicks, then butcher both genders. Leghorns mature quickly (so however much they will grow, they do most of it fast.) Plymouth Rocks would also mature quickly, so they might be a good choice for producing slightly larger chicks that still grow fast (not as fast as Cornish Cross, but larger than pure Leghorn chicks at a given age.) Then have the Leghorn rooster with Leghorn hens at another point in the year, to produce pure Leghorn chicks for the next generation of layers (of course half would be males, so butcher them too.)

No other breed is as time and cost effective to raise for meat as the Cornish Cross - look on the forum here - a number of people have tried. But it is a terminal cross that comes with its own special management requirements. If you can find a great deal on CX chicks and raise them in bulk, this will be the least time and money option. But if you're going for self-sufficiency, having to buy chicks every year, regardless of their price, isn't it.

I agree, about both the good points and the bad points of Cornish Cross.

 

[FunClucks]

It's also possible to run a meatier breed of rooster with Leghorn hens to get chicks that grow a bit bigger than pure Leghorn chicks, then butcher both genders. Leghorns mature quickly (so however much they will grow, they do most of it fast.) Plymouth Rocks would also mature quickly, so they might be a good choice for producing slightly larger chicks that still grow fast (not as fast as Cornish Cross, but larger than pure Leghorn chicks at a given age.) Then have the Leghorn rooster with Leghorn hens at another point in the year, to produce pure Leghorn chicks for the next generation of layers (of course half would be males, so butcher them too.)

Good ideas!

I'm actually doing something similar right now - I have a Production Red rooster (production version of RIR - I swear he's 10+ lbs at 11 months - I can barely pick him up with two arms) and have crossed him over prairie bluebells (there's leghorn and araucana in them) and starlight green eggers because that's what I have, and I wanted colored egger chicks. I was hoping the PR rooster would give the PBB cockerels at least a larger size and that the hens would be colored eggers. The PBB have the zinc white gene, so I may get some blue eggers out of it, at the outside green eggers, which would also make me happy. So far I'm getting a mix of sizes in the cockerels, and will see how they grow out - they're only 6 weeks. I have ~14 cockerels out of 20 chicks. 14 cockerels is a lot of cockerels when I was trying for colored egg layers. I might try and rehome one or two of the nicer cockerels, but most of them will be dinner.

I hadn't considered eating them before about 4 months - if they give me trouble in their bachelor pad, I'll keep that in mind.

 

[CaretakerCarol]

I don't think you can say that a specific breed of hen will be a bad mother. I had a silver leghorn who hatched 10 chicks and was a fantastic mother. The issue is who will go broody in your flocks. Apparently, the modern hatchery system breeds the brood out of many hens.

Out of 25 hens, I only have 3 that go broody on a regular basis (Golden Wyandotte, Silver Leghorn, and a barnyard mix - natural daughter of our Silver). I have had a couple others that have had a single brood cycle but never went back into that state.

Watch for broody birds in your flocks. Don't force them out of the brood because you don't have any eggs to hatch. Just let them do their thing and force them off the nest box occasionally to ensure they are drinking and eating. My hens will go broody for up to 35 days at which point we are usually more assertive in ensuring she leaves the box every day. Once Spring hits, the broody cycles come fairly frequently up until Winter. Once Winter comes, we don't usually see any broodiness.

 

[FunClucks]

I don't think you can say that a specific breed of hen will be a bad mother. I had a silver leghorn who hatched 10 chicks and was a fantastic mother. The issue is who will go broody in your flocks. Apparently, the modern hatchery system breeds the brood out of many hens.

Out of 25 hens, I only have 3 that go broody on a regular basis (Golden Wyandotte, Silver Leghorn, and a barnyard mix - natural daughter of our Silver). I have had a couple others that have had a single brood cycle but never went back into that state.

Watch for broody birds in your flocks. Don't force them out of the brood because you don't have any eggs to hatch. Just let them do their thing and force them off the nest box occasionally to ensure they are drinking and eating. My hens will go broody for up to 35 days at which point we are usually more assertive in ensuring she leaves the box every day. Once Spring hits, the broody cycles come fairly frequently up until Winter. Once Winter comes, we don't usually see any broodiness.

My Starlight Green Egger has gone broody twice. She's a fancy easter egger mix with leghorn in there somewhere, and lays 6-7 eggs a week. Never thought she'd be the one to go broody. My Buff Orpington on the other hand, touted for their potential as a broody and as a mother, hasn't gone broody once, and neither has anyone else in my 15 hen flock. Chickens!

 

[drink88]

There are several threads on this topic if you want to read through. There's actually scientific analysis of the feeds in question that members here paid to have done...nothing unnatural or off was found. unlike everyone on social media who prefer hysteria over sound analysis, we take thus seriously.
If you want to make your own feed this is a good place to research since most online feed recipes aren't healthy.
Further reading.
First & third posts in this thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/feed-tests-more-results.1565804/
This thread, posts 6, 10, 12, 14, 18, 22
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...en-feed-craze-posted-testing-results.1564737/
Post 581 of this thread (I think this link will go straight to it; same feed as the one just above)
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-to-be-analyzed.1561749/page-59#post-26554912
This is the thread comparing feed labels (spoiler: not much changed.) The labels are sprinkled throughout many pages, so this one isn't a quick read.

Well, I will say this, everyone I know that was using specifically Purina feed, and I think there was another one, all of them reported their chickens stopped laying eggs. Not only everyone I knew, but everyone was talking and the sheer number of people that all reported the same thing was astounding. Which means, something was in the feed that was unnatural and stopping them from laying eggs. How else can you explain that everyone in my town that had chickens and were using Purina, all had their chickens stop laying eggs? There was even a video of someone calling Purina and talking to someone on the phone, admitting there was something going on and they were looking into it.

Regardless, as we've seen over the last few years, you can't always trust that big corporations have your best interest in mind, over their profits or motives. Therefore, to rule out nefarious motives all together, it would behoove everyone that cares about these things, to learn how to make your own using natural ingredients. That's what I'm doing.

I won't use food that has anything unnatural in it, and looking for ways to not only avoid that, but in a worst case scenario and we can't buy feed...how does one go about feeing their animals. So I want to create a system where I can grow or put together a feeding system that is natural and healthy that I don't have to go anywhere to buy. If that means growing sprouts, or veggies, or whatever, then that makes a lot more sense than buying from corporations, in my opinion.

Appreciate the input.

 

[drink88]

A friend of mine actually had 9 roosters in their own run and coop and never had a problem with them like that. They were meat birds, that is why they were separated from the rest.

Good to know. That makes things much easier in my set up. Appreciate the input.

 

[drink88]

What breed will you use for the meat birds?

I haven't figured that out yet...I just ordered my White Leghorns, did a lot of reading and it seemed like they were a great egg layer. Now it's time to move on to finding some good meat birds, so will start researching that now.

 

[drink88]

You could consider getting some bantams to do the incubating.
I've had some Old English Game bantams that were good mothers.
They can live with any of the other flocks except when they are sitting & raising chicks.

A hen doesn't care who laid the eggs she is sitting on. So as long as you can tell which eggs were laid by the hens you want chicks from, you can just put the right eggs under the broodies.


How long do you think you are going to be raising these males before you butcher them?
If you want the meat nice and tender, you have to butcher them fairly young (maybe 2-3 months).

For almost any of the common breeds of chicken, males live together just fine up to any reasonable butchering age, and usually well past that point.

Ones that were specifically bred for cockfighting might have issues, but you are not talking about having any of those.



If the rooster is in the pen with the hens, he will mate with them.
After he mates with a hen, every egg she lays for the next week or so will be fertile. She might keep laying fertile eggs for two or three weeks (some do, some don't).
If the rooster had 100 hens, he probably would not mate often enough with each one, so some would lay infertile eggs-- that's where the advice about how many hens per rooster comes from. With 15 hens per rooster, he will probably do just fine with all of them.

When you want to hatch eggs, you do not need to move any chickens to other pens. Just collect the right number of eggs, and put them in an incubator or under a broody hen.

When you do not want to hatch eggs, collect eggs every day and store & use them like normal eggs. Fertile eggs will not develop chicks in the refrigerator, and they will not develop chicks if you store them at room temperature (unless your room temperaure is as warm as an incubator.)

If you do not want to hatch chicks, you do not need a rooster at all. Hens will lay eggs just as well if there is no rooster present. Having a rooster is not a problem, but it is also not needed.

For hatching the eggs, a broody hen is content to be a single parent. She does not need the rooster around to help as she sits on the eggs and raises the chicks.

Really appreciate all the great information!

I will probably have a separate part of the coop for baby making/incubating, so they can focus at the task at hand! So getting some bantams like you say will probably be the answer. I think this will also take care of knowing which eggs are fertile or not.

I'm a newb, so no idea how long to keep until butchering, but that's why I came here...to learn from folks like you. So I will probably be doing as you suggested, keeping them 2-3 months and then butchering. So they will will be in one of the pens for incubation with the bantams, then the males moved to another pen for meat chickens, and the hens will be added to the egg laying pens. Hopefully I can have a nice little process down where everyone has the space they need to do what they need, to feed me and my families bellies.

So yeah, I'll have the hens in the egg laying pen, and when I want to make more chicks, I'll move some over to the baby making pen with a rooster, and let that process happen, separate from all the other hens, and then have a bantam incubate (or manually incubate if need be). I guess I need to figure out the bantam situation...how many to buy, should they be housed with the egg layers and moved to baby making pen when they're needed, etc. Any suggestions on the type of bantam to buy to do this job?

Your last paragraph taking about broody hens being single parents...if the roosters stay in their own pen, and I bring in a bantam to incubate, is that a bad idea? Will they start knocking her up too? Not sure if I should have ANOTHER small pen just for the bantams when they need to incubate, and keep roosters out of that...meaning put the hens in the rooster pen to make babies, and then move the eggs to the bantam pen so they incubate and separate from the roosters...or if it matters if they are staying with the roosters while sitting on the eggs for that period of time.

After going over all this with you, it seems I'm going to need:
2 pens with 15 egg layers each (I have a total of 30 on the way)
1 pen for meat chickens (once baby making happens - males only)
1 pen for baby making where I have the rooster (plan is to always keep 1 or 2 roosters for this process - all other will be meat chickens) and hen moved over from egg layers
1 pen for incubating with bantams (when not incubating, they are living their best life I guess)

Sound about right? Haha.

And last question...from this post!

How in the world can I free range such an operation? I need to keep them separate obviously, but also want them to free range a bit, get some natural food on their own, get some sun light, exercise, etc. Without creating some elaborate system where I corral them into certain pens when they come back, which would be a nightmare, not sure what to do. I'm thinking I'll just have to create a HUGE area that is a free range/run that's still fenced to keep them separate. Maybe a couple mobile tractor pens or something. Any ideas?

Once again, thanks for all the information and helping me think through this. I can't pick up the chicks until May, so I have some time to plan and build whatever it is I need.

 

[drink88]

I don't think you can say that a specific breed of hen will be a bad mother. I had a silver leghorn who hatched 10 chicks and was a fantastic mother. The issue is who will go broody in your flocks. Apparently, the modern hatchery system breeds the brood out of many hens.

Out of 25 hens, I only have 3 that go broody on a regular basis (Golden Wyandotte, Silver Leghorn, and a barnyard mix - natural daughter of our Silver). I have had a couple others that have had a single brood cycle but never went back into that state.

Watch for broody birds in your flocks. Don't force them out of the brood because you don't have any eggs to hatch. Just let them do their thing and force them off the nest box occasionally to ensure they are drinking and eating. My hens will go broody for up to 35 days at which point we are usually more assertive in ensuring she leaves the box every day. Once Spring hits, the broody cycles come fairly frequently up until Winter. Once Winter comes, we don't usually see any broodiness.

Ok, I still have a lot to learn with this part of the process.

Broody means that they will sit on the eggs, or in the egg laying box, for long periods of time, as if she was incubating. I will only know if one of the is broody by noticing them laying in the boxes, right?

Are you saying that if there is a broody hen in the flock I get, she will tend to remain broody throughout the year?

My plan is to raise all the chicks, separate into two pens of 15 each, and get the egg laying production underway. I'll have a rooster and at some point when they are of age, I'll take one or two and move to a pen with a rooster to start making more chicks. My question is this...should I move the broody hen(s) to the rooster pen so that she can have chicks, knowing she'll be a good mother and incubate? Or just have the rooster with two hens, and then use the broody hen to incubate them even if they're not hers?

I'll have a baby making pen where all the magic happens, and an incubator pen where the broody hen or bantams will be for the incubation period. Want to keep separate because the roosters will be by themselves in the baby making pen, and figured the incubation pen will be nice and quiet so they can focus on being good mothers.

Thoughts?