Christmas Chicken.....

[Rixy]

Next year instead of buying a chicken for Christmas lunch I thought I'd give rearing my own a chance which leads me on to asking a few questions.

1. What breed/s make the best tasting eating birds?
2. How long will it take to fatten it up?
3. Where could I source the chick from?

[Hilary B]

There are people who will sell small batches of fast-growing chooks (never bought any, but a neighbour has a few times). Those are eatable (but not very tasty) from about 10-12 weeks. If you go for one of the traditional breeds, most of them don't reach eating size until about 20-24 weeks, but got more flavour.
It isn't realistic to buy less than about 6, and a dozen is a lot better value. It might be difficult to find anyone willing to sell 'growing' table birds. Mostly you have to buy them at day old, which means a few 'changes' of feed, from chick-crumb to growers' meal to finishers', and small quantities are expensive (if you can find them), so the ideal is to have enough chooks to use up the standard size sacks of each feed..... (you may still need to buy chick-crumb in small quantities, it takes an incredible number of chicks to finish a bag of chick-crumb before they are the size to do better on growers').
Question is, if you buy a dozen chicks and rear, what will you do with the other 10?

[OverWyreGrower]

Question is, if you buy a dozen chicks and rear, what will you do with the other 10?

Fill your freezer with them! We have 5 that will go by Christmas, and we plan to joint them etc and put them in the freezer

[Rixy]

Freeze them !.

[RichmondHens]

Sussex, Dorking, Indian Game, and crosses of them.

All will take approx 6 months to fatten from small chicks.

You might be better off sourcing specifically cock chicks/growers from farms or markets, rather than trying to buy from a commercial breeder.

[moola]

I do both types. I find the commercial hybrids (like Sasso, RossCobbs etc) better for roasting. More of a white meat bird. The traditional birds - I tend to do Ixworths are more gamier tasting and you have to be careful, that if you are roasting them, that they do not get too tough and have enough fat on them (usually corn towards the end of their rearing sorts this out). Superb flavour, darker meat but generally best for slow cooking recipes. You can source chicks from Poulet Anglais (search online) or check out the back of smallholder mag or PP for ads. Chicks are about 80p each but those who deliver tend to look for min of 25. I have gotten together with a few other people locally and we order in batches - I'd ask around and see if others are interested. You must remember that the first few weeks are quite intensive in that they need to be reared under heat and eat and poop loads - so lots of cleaning. You need to get them off heat and safely outside - but in winter, many people choose to rear in a barn/garage to help keep weight on the birds.
Late Spring is an ideal time for rearing as you can get them out quicker and it makes life a whole lot easier

[jayjay giant]

Indian game and Dorking are probably the best. Be prepared though, once you have raised and eaten your own birds you won't ever want any of that rubbish you buy in shops. No matter where they say it comes from or how they say it has lived or been fed. It WILL NOT taste anything like the birds you can raise yourself ! There won't be a scrap of waste either.

Good luck with it,

JJ

[Bramble-Poultry]

Smart Chicks - Details on Sasso Chicks

these guys do sasso and sasso crosses. they will sell you hatching eggs, day olds or even off heat 6 week old chicks in any number from 1 - 1000!

I havent tried them myself, but a friend at work has and says that his run till about 14 weeks when he then slaughters them. They arent too fat and a good flavour. Take them over 24 weeks and they tend to run to fat unless they have a lot of grass to run over and run it off

Being based on the Rhode Island Red he has put a few surving chicks to his RIR cock and got some reasonable chicks out of it.

I intend to try this person out for growers as i like the fact that their legs dont collapse as they row like the Cobbs. These are designed as free range eaters. They will also sell you a mix bag of sasso and sasso crosses so they all dont mature at the same time. This means that you wont have to put a whole day aside to deal with 50 birds in one go, you can take a few each time as they mature.

[moola]

You can stop them by going off their legs by restricting food when chicks under heat. Keep to basic daytime hours and it really helps. I think alot of people go wrong by keeping lights on at nighttime and keeping food in - ok - it's a way to rear them to reach their weights by 8 weeks but mortality rates are higher.
I'd also definately advocate ranging space - if they are 'fit' they'll be able to cope with that extra meat weight.
I checked out Smart Chicks a while back, but they didn't have a route my way - they tend to go west and central - they looked good