# Best Meat Chickens to get??



## carrotsnranch (Jun 23, 2018)

Live in middle of NC. Wondering what best chicken breed to get for meat. Best taste, etc. 

I also want to get egg layers, should It be 2 different breeds? Keep them separate? Helpful tips? 

For egg layers what breeds? Etc 

Thanks!


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## spidy1 (Jan 9, 2014)

egg layers are different breeds than your biggest/best meat chickens, for meat Cornish crosses/ Cornish Rock breeds are best, for eggs it all depends on what you like, for white eggs Leghorn, for blue-green eggs Americana/Easter Egger, for brown almost all other breeds lay brown, I have Rhode Island Reds, a Buff Orpington mix, and some other breeds I cant remember right now, and a big roo, you can get eggs without a roo but it is much better to have one.


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## Lstein (Oct 2, 2014)

Cornish X are by far the best meat bird but that's it. You buy them to butcher and that is their only purpose. Letting them go much past 9 weeks, they start to break down.

Good layers, like spidy1 said, are more of a it depends what you want scenario.

I personally keep Brahmas. Nice calm birds, beautiful, lay fairly well maybe 4-5 a week (though they take far longer than most breeds to start laying). Extremely broody, 5 of my 8 hens have or are broody this year. The roosters make for a pretty nice meat bird, but again, it takes far longer and more feed than the Cornish X.

Most of the brown egg breeds are going to be similar to the brahmas, except they may lay more, be less broody, and may be slightly smaller.

Good egg laying breeds are white leghorn, production reds/red star/(many different names for them). They are both lighter birds though, and really best for just eggs. (but they do lay very well, probably going to get 6-7 eggs a week).

If you for sure want some birds in the freezer, similar to what you would expect from the grocery store, I would go with the Cornish X. Other breeds are going to take longer to have much meat on them, smaller breasts, and more muscle-y. That and having several young roosters of any other breed, is generally just chaos.

If you decide to raise cornish X, I would raise them separate. They will literally eat until it kills them if given the chance; they shouldn't have access to feed 24/7 past a certain age point (I don't remember the exact time frame.)

So long story short, kind of depends on what you want; a breed that does a little of both, just eggs, or just meat.


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## Sfgwife (Feb 18, 2018)

This is kinda a loaded question lol!

So do you want fast growin meat birds or self sustaining heritage breed birds? 

If fast growin we prefer rangers.. red or rainbow they are both the same. They do have a longer grow out time than cornishx but the meat is so much more flavorful and the whole bird is proportionate. Rangers also will forage pretty well unlike cornishx that sit, eat and drink and poop. We do ours in a tractor and they have the electric netting to grass and bug hunt every day after they are off heat. They eat of a mornin and evenin but forage the rest of the day. Ours usually dress out at 5-7 pounds per bird. Out of the few hundred of rangers we have grown we have lost maybe five. 

We did raise cornishx once. Hubby hated movin the tractor cause they just sat there and didnt care there was fresh grass. The guys here are leg people and ccx legs are tiny and jus a tease for them lol. If you are into mostly breast meat ccx are god for that. We also had more ccx die on us at all stages of their life. They were on medicated feed to help with cocci and we did do a round of corrid not long after they went on grass. But the deaths were bad legs and hearts that looked like mush when birdtopsied. Plus if you do ccx in any kind of heat you will lose them from that. It was gettin to mid 70 and we lost like four in a week from heat. 

If you want self sustaining go for big breed birds.. brahma, langashan, rocks etc. they can lay and you can broody hatch or incubator hatch. Then when you want to butcher just pick ever how many you want to do. They take a long while to grow out but they will also free range a lot for their food. So that part makes up for the longer grow out time kinda. If you go this way you will also need more coop space since they will be there a while. 

Growing out extra cockrels is also another way of doin it. I got chicks from a breeder this spring and she had some extra cockrels that i took to grow out. We only kept them for bout 13ish weeks i think it was. The coop was gettin very full with nearly grown birds and there were jus too many cockrels with new hoarmoans. Some people keep extra cockrels in a bachelor pad and it workd well for them. Ours dressed out bout two and half pounds which was fine with us. It will jus take a whole one of those vs half a ranger for a meal for three of us. And butcherin them youngish kept their meat tender too. 

Egg layers.... i wanted a colorful egg basket. So we have leghorn, sex links, polish, plymouth rocks, buffs, bcm, whiting, bardyard mutts from our eggs, langashan, barred rocks and bantam br. The only thing i do not have is an olive egger and i will get a few of those next year when i am replacin layers. I get white, cream, all shades of browns, greens, blues, will get dark choklits soon, a rosy color egg. 

If you have read this far.... since i see you live in the middle of nc maybe you live close to us (mebane). You are more than welcome to come get half a ranger from my freezer to try if you want.


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## Goat_Scout (Mar 23, 2017)

My favorite meat breed is the Red Rangers, they are a heritage breed and although they take a little longer to grow out than Cornish Crosses do, they are great foragers and more hardy/self sustaining. I even kept a couple hens past butchering and they laid very well for a few years before we butchered them or they died of natural causes. In my experience, the Cornish Cross meat birds can be hard to keep alive, and in the last couple weeks they are so heavy that they can’t move around well at all. It’s pitiful and I hate seeing them like that, poor guys.


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## carrotsnranch (Jun 23, 2018)

[QUOTE="Goat_Scout spidy1 Lstein Sfgwife 

Thanks for all the info!!! Super great!!! Copied it and pasted it into notes to reread them all. So sounds like while Cornish Xs are good for meat, and quicker to go, they did easily, and don’t forage? Might be better just to get a few of those and some other meat kind as well?? 

Can’t thank y’all enough! So much better than reading 50 articles and blogs lol!!


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## Karen Kuntz (Apr 25, 2018)

We have raised Cornish Rock Xs multiple times and they are ready to be butchered at 8 weeks old. They are tender and delicious. One time we waited until they were 10 to 12 weeks old and they were past their prime. We also have Black Australops as layers and they are great. Some have even gone broody this year and raised their own chicks.


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