We
butchered another third of our cockerels last week, and I decided to
crunch the numbers on these 16 week old Dark Cornish. You might
remember that at 12
weeks old, our cockerels weighed an average of 2.25 pounds per dressed
carcass, which came
out to a cost of $2.51 per pound. Our 16 week old birds weighed 3
pounds apiece, and the new weight cost us $4.33 per pound in
feed. Clearly, letting our cockerels get older makes the feed to
meat ratio worse, not better.
The 16 week old birds
were also considerably spunkier. I thought it was cute the first
time I saw the cockerels roosting on
the coop roof, but
now I'm wondering how we're going to capture the last 9 birds before
our last butchering day. Even worse, when Mark went into the coop
to catch his first chicken on our kill day, the chickens were so big
and vigorous that one accidentally gave him a big scratch across his
face.
I had been considering
keeping a
breeding pair of Dark Cornish to experiment with next
year, but I've changed my mind. I've decided we don't need --- or
want --- a predator resistant breed, and would instead prefer something
sedate and docile. So the last 9 broilers are slated for
slaughter this week, and next year's experiment is simmering on the
back burner.
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Right now, I'm planning on trying to get our broody hen to sit on our own eggs, which would be a hybrid of a Golden Comet mother and a Golden Comet/Rhode Island Red rooster. We'll keep some of the pullets to rejuvenate our laying flock and eat the young cockerels. We won't get the same big breast, but this method has a couple of advantages:
*We can raise 8-12 chicks at a time, so we won't have to slaughter 25 chickens at once the way we would have to if we got another batch of hatchery chicks.
*I suspect the lighter birds will forage a lot better and eat less.
However, I know that the hybrid birds aren't going to have the big breasts of traditional broilers and will probably be considerably smaller when we slaughter them. And then there's the big question mark of what we'll get when we hybridize a hybrid!
The other option, which we'll try if our broody hen doesn't come through, would be to raise one of the breeds people used for broilers before Cornish Cross hit the scene --- New Hampshires or White Wyandottes.
How about you?
I didn't weigh the Dark Cornish at 8 weeks, but they were considerably smaller than the 2.25 pounds they butchered to at 12 weeks. You can see a photo of them at eight weeks at http://avianaquamiser.com/posts/When_to_butcher_broilers/.
Although they were light when we butchered them, there was plenty of meat and it was delectable. You get more leg meat than breast meat on Dark Cornish (and nearly every chicken except Cornish Cross.)
I've never actually eaten a cornish hen, but a quick search of the internet suggests they weight 1.5 pounds. My broilers were cockerels (except one accidental hen in the mix), so I suspect that to get a cornish hen, you'd raise pullets instead. Chances are that the pullets would reach cornish hen size somewhere between 8 and 12 weeks.