# Best Meat Chickens OTHER than CornishX



## volchitsa (Jul 18, 2011)

Other than CornishX, Broiler, Barred Rock, Delaware, and RIR, what's the best chicken for meat?
By best, I meat quick to harvest with a nice meaty carcass.


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## Caprice Acres (Mar 6, 2005)

Perhaps you could try the red broilers or freedom rangers. Some people like those. 

I'm not impressed by any 'meat' bird other than the Cornish crosses. They're all 'skinny chickens' in comparison and take 4x as long to grow out. By then the thighs are too tough to eat and you've put way more feed and effort into them. Esp. when the roosters start harassing everything in sight.


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## volchitsa (Jul 18, 2011)

I actually was looking at Red and Black Broilers, but I'm ordering from Ideal and they're out of stock. Ideal has plain Cornish that are available, are those any good for meat?


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## Caprice Acres (Mar 6, 2005)

Probably pretty good once they get big enough. I've never had straight cornish, but I hear the're very slow growing. The longer the growout, the tougher they usually are (especially thighs which become inedible) and the more they cost to get to butchering weight.


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## mylala (Jun 3, 2008)

Freedom Rangers are good they take like 10-12 wks to grow out which is a few weeks longer than the cornishxrock. they are very meaty birds, nothing like a laying breed rooster. Home - Freedom Ranger Hatchery Take a look at them.


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## Otter (Jan 15, 2008)

If you don't want a chicken bred for it like the CX or broilers, the best dress-outs I've personally had were male Red Sex Links. They were bigger and had more breast meat then other 12 week old cockerals I butchered at the same time. This isn't saying much though. None of them are roasting chickens, they are frying chickens and crock-pot chickens


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## Cliff (Jun 30, 2007)

For just normal birds imo Marans are the best. They are the best tasting of any chicken I've ever tasted (it's what they were originally bred for) and have a nice big carcass. They will also reproduce so you are freed from ordering chicks from someone else all the time.


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## thequeensblessing (Mar 30, 2003)

We raise the cornish X every year. We've tried just about every other meat/dual purpose bird out there, but we've found that none compare with the Cornish X. We don't have much trouble with fluid build up or anything as we let them free range after they're out of the brooder. We only feed them in the morning, just once a day, and we keep the feed and the water at opposite ends of the barn so they have to walk to go from one to the other. We lose about 10% each year, from various causes, and we've found that's not much worse than with any other poultry we order and better than our turkey poult loss ratio.


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## trimpy (Mar 30, 2011)

I have found that standard cornish, dark cornish in my case, provide way more breast meat than most the breeds you listed (don't have experience with all of them). They don't look any bigger than my other chickens, but when you pick one up they are HEAVY. I just ate some 6mo old roos the other day (stir fry) and the meat wasn't tough at all.


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## Cliff (Jun 30, 2007)

We raised some dark cornish to compare to marans one year. The dark cornish have a shorter rounder carcass but the marans (black) had an overall larger one. They are longer and more stretched out but they have just as much breast meat. It just doesn't have that puffed out look that the cornish brings. The marans meat is definitely better tasting.


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## Jennifer L. (May 10, 2002)

I agree, the Marans are good for meat. Best "regular" chickens for meat I've raised.

Jennifer


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## mrs whodunit (Feb 3, 2012)

I am wondering about the Dark Cornish. The hens we have are hefty and good egg layers.


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## fishhead (Jul 19, 2006)

I raised barred rock cockerals one summer and they dressed out at 8 lbs in 16 weeks. They started picking at each other at about 14 weeks.


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## jcatblum (Dec 15, 2009)

I have butchered RIR, EE, & NN Roos that we hatched plus a few others. 

The naked necks were the best IMO. Just from looking at their carcass you could tell the NN apart from the others. This time around I want to try Capons. I have someone willing to teach me the process so the NN eggs that I put on lock down today will become my first batch of Capons hopefully next month.


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