Feed Conversion of Heritage Breeds?

[eatmorechicken]

Does anybody have any info on the feed conversion of some of the common heritage breeds? I believe leghorn cockerels eat 9 lbs of feed by the time they reach 4.5 lbs live weight for a FCR of 2 lbs of feed per lb of gained weight. Am I wrong on that calculation? What are some FCR's of other breeds. I'm looking into the cost analysis of raising heritage breeds for meat.

 

[TimG]

That sounds wrong, I don't think any standard breeds will perform as well as 2:1.

 

[Bossroo]

That feed to meat convertion rate comes close to applying to the Cornish X , which has the best feed to meat conversion rate in all of chickendom. For the leghorn, that breed is an egg layer... it has the best feed to egg producer rate. However it has one of the worst feed to meat conversion rates. As for the DP multiply that rate by at least 2-4x depending on breed, source of parent line genetics and management.

 

[eatmorechicken]

I found my info here

http://www.equizoobio.it/downloads/castellini_01.pdf

The weights were measured in kg. I did some math to get the FCR in lbs. Did I read or do the math wrong?

It seems to me commercial leghorns will have equally good FCR as broilers so that farms can drive down the cost of feed. They are just not acknowledged because they finish below a marketable weight.

 

[eatmorechicken]

Quote:
Do you know what the FCR is on some specific breeds or lines of DP chickens? I want to preserve a breed, but I have to make them profitable or the project is over.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Quote:
The FCRs were stated in the data. It was 4.4 for purebred males and 3.4 for male crosses.

 

[hudsonnascarfan]

i think it would be interesting to find out the differances in costs as to raiseing a dp chicken for meat birds as to the cost of the xrocks after all the dp birds should be hatching out there own eggs as to haveing to order chicks and shipping costs its something ive been trying to find out for myself im totaly for a good dp flock for both meat and for eggs i know it takes longer to grow out the dp chickens but im thinking long term and the dp you also get eggs as well as meat

 

[eatmorechicken]

Quote:
The FCRs were stated in the data. It was 4.4 for purebred males and 3.4 for male crosses.

oops I read it so fast I didn't stop to think that the ratio is the same no matter what unit it was measured in

. 4.4:1 kg = 9.7:2.2 lbs (4.4:1 lbs)

 

[jfishfam]

I'm curious. What are the benefits of heritage breed chickens? What about cost? What about time to butcher? Just curious, any information would be nice.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I've researched this off and on, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of research based evidence out there to be found on the feed conversion of heritage breeds. By this I mean non-hybrid meat birds and non-commercial Leghorns which are often strain-crosses so they aren't really pure bred in the conventional sense of the word.

What little I have been able to find leads me to believe the feed conversion of your typical dual-purpose heritage breed birds are in the neighborhood of five to one so if you want to produce a five pound live weight rooster it's going to take about twenty five pounds of feed to do so. A good selective breeding program could probably improve that somewhat, but not anywhere close to what modern day Cornish Cross can do I believe.

I'm interested in this because of the usual "what to do with the roosters" problem in breeding your own birds. Pullets are easy to sell. Roosters are difficult, at least for enough to pay back their feed costs.