[billathome65]

Ok now I got my chickens I could not bring myself to dispatch them to the pot it wouldn't feel right.

How many of you here have been able to bring yourself to dispatching a chicken or chickens to the pot???

Bill

[joyfull]

I dispatch spare cockerels which me and the dogs will eat but my oh won't (I have to tell him they are from Grannie Annie and he will then eat them  ) and I will dispatch a poorly chicken if there is no hope rather than let it suffer.

[Dominic]

Its my understanding that plucking a chicken is way to much effort.

[joyfull]

you get quicker with practise, but you can always skin the bird and use the legs and breast instead for speed.

[Casey76]

I find it very difficult to cull my laying hens (e.g. due to injur or illness) but it is something that has to be done.

the birds I rear for meat, on the other hand... I view them differently, so I don't have any issues with culling them.

However I do see hens as livestock more than as pets, and I don't have the same emotional attachment to them as I do my cats, for example.  Not that I don't get upset/angry/frustrated when they are ill or injured, and I nurse them when they are sick

[min200]

I dispatch my own cockerals and they are quite tasty! 

I do give them a sporting chance and ask if anyone wants them first 

[Dominic]

Has anyone worked out the economics of meat birds?

Even if they kill at 30 days, they must be expensive, even compared to free range tesco?
I suppose if you hatch your own, thats a big expense sort of gone.

[Casey76]

It's cheaper to buy in meat birds as day olds.  I pay between 95c and 1.05€ each for day old hybrids.  They would cost much more than that to buy in eggs, then run the incy for 21 days

Certainly it is cheaper to buy chicken from the supermarket, but even free range chicken tastes nothing like home grown chicken.  I always run my chickens on for between 12 and 14 weeks (so 98 days +) but I buy medium growth hybrids, not fast growing commercial strains.

[Dominic]

I was thinking all natural broody hen, so then its just food.
Having just checked food prices, I'm just overpaying by more than I thought.
And probably wastwe a lot more than a semi-pro would.

Hmmm....

Nar, other half would never go for it, probably not....

Hmm...

[billathome65]

My two cost £12 each and £15 delivery so dispatching them would not be viable.

The other option would be to buy some Ex-batery but are they any good to eat? They cost £5 but I still have a £15 delivery charge on them.

I'm thinking supermarket.

Bill

[Dominic]

Bill
Day old meat birds that kill at 30-40 days were £1.50 each at the first place I found online, googling "day old meat chicken".

Fully grown egg hens are a different thing to buy.
Although will eventualy stop laying, at which point, some owners prepare them for sunday lunch.

Ex bats usualy end up in dog food and chicken pies, I doubt they would make a good sunday roast.

[joyfull]

when you get ex batts you undertake to give them a home for life in retirement (even eggs are a bonus) not to cull for food (otherwise there is no point in rescuing them).
Also as they are hybrids raised specifically for mass egg production there would be no meat on them plus the fact at that age they would not be suitable for roasting (unless of course you try steaming them first).

[GrannieAnnie]

No egg laying hybrid is really much good for eating, although like Joy and Min, some of our members do cull and eat their cockerals.

But although meat chickens aren't as cheap as supermarket stuff, (mind you saying that, we can make a little profit on selling a few of ours,) yes they do taste far superior to the watery tasteless stuff you buy anywhere, even the so called free range and organic chickens.

Also if you think about it.  Brian culls ours dry, they are plucked dry and gutted dry.  commercial chickens are culled in water, plucked wet and gutted wet AND have water and polyphosphates injected into them.  And what happens when a chicken is killed?  A lot of the time it poos itself. poo drops into the stunning water and contaminates all the other chickens that go into the same water.  

In fact there was an article in the Poultry World magazine about the amount of campylobactor that was found not only on the chickens they tested, but on the packaging too!

So as long as I can eat something I've raised myself, I will carry on enjoying it!  

[compostqueen]

That makes sobering reading GA.  I didn't know about any of that. Thanks for enlightening me/us

[billathome65]

when you get ex batts you undertake to give them a home for life in retirement (even eggs are a bonus) not to cull for food (otherwise there is no point in rescuing them).

Thought I'd responded to this. I wasn't thinking about potting ex bats was just making a comparison which still works out dearer than the supermarket with transport and food etc.

Bill