We've a dwindling flock of mixed hybrid egglayers here, who've done us well but are due for replacement soon.
We'd like chickens to eat, too, but don't want to run two completely separate flocks (although we know we'd need to keep the table males in their own run from pre-puberty.)
We're a community of 20+ adults and 9 children, with a small farm we run ourselves, rearing livestock, milking our Jersey and growing veg. We're always all very busy, so don't want to stretch ourselves too thin.
We need 20-25 hen eggs a day, are happy to buy extra eggs in winter when production is lower, and would probably eat a couple of cocks a week, at least, once we hit steady state.
We think our favoured two options are:
- Find a nice cockerel of a good-sized dual purpose breed, let him run with our girls and let nature take its course. Buy eggs to make up the shortfall until the new generation kicks in.
- Clear out the current flock and buy a new flock of POLs of our chosen breed, with an unrelated cockerel.
Comments welcomed, particularly on your experiences with dual purpose breeds / egg-laying breeds whose cockerels are big enough to make a decent meal, and whose hens will make a good job of rearing. On the shortlist at the mo are Rhodies, Silver Dorkings, Light Sussex, Welsummer but we're open to suggestions of other breeds to look at.
It's entirely possible we'd get one breed to start off with, then after a couple of years a new cockerel of a different breed. (One breeding programme I unwittingly participated in bred superb cockerels from Rhodie x LS, then x Silver Dorking. But that was very small scale, and we got all cockerels in the last generation, so I've no idea how the hens would have performed! Lol)