The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: rorsa on April 17, 2008, 09:39:41 am

Title: age to eat chickens
Post by: rorsa on April 17, 2008, 09:39:41 am
I have hatched 4 Light Sussex chicks. We intend to eat them. Can anyone tell me at what age I should be looking to kill them?
Title: Re: age to eat chickens
Post by: MrRee on April 17, 2008, 11:51:02 am
Hi,
  Cockerels should weigh 2-3lbs at 8-12 weeks. Table birds should weigh between 3-4lbs at 12-14 weeks,but you can feed them up for longer,keeping them semi-confined ie not running all over the place will help,and you can go til 6-9 months. After that,I have found,they get a bit stringy.
 Someone with more experience will come along soon and post killing out weights etc etc........ Ree
Title: Re: age to eat chickens
Post by: Rosemary on April 17, 2008, 02:41:59 pm
We've just killed our first two Hubbards (meat strain) at 12 weeks. One was 5.5lb cleaned weight and the other 6lb. We should have weighed them before we killed them to get a KO% but we didn't. I think the KO% for chickens is about 72% (there's a thread about this somewhere).

We'd recommend killing them first thing in the morning sothe crop and gut are pretty empty, bleeding and plucking, then hanging for 24 hours before cleaning. That's the best way we've found SO FAR.

The meat from the Hubbards was lovely.

We've three more to despatch, so will add more experiences to the site in due course.
Title: Re: age to eat chickens
Post by: rorsa on April 17, 2008, 04:30:22 pm
Thanks for that - very helpful.