Backyard Poultry Forum

A bit unfortunate that yet another person is being shifty when selling something. I wonder how many people who bought his chicks are at the point where they are questioning just what they purchased too. For the price you'd think it would have been just as easy for him to say he didn't know what breed they were. At least you didn't pay a lot, that's something I suppose.

Did he actually say the hatchery told him what breed they were, even though he supposedly got them from a friend? (or was it the friend the hatchery told?). If he's saying the hatchery told him the breed then it doesn't even seem like he's aware of the nonsense story he's spinning.

Are you going to keep on their current feed schedule or think you'll switch to a meat grower feed and try to plump them up sooner rather than later?

Good luck with your meat growing, at least your Indian Game are growing nicely!

To claim 'meat bird' is probably the only way to make any money from excess male chicks.

If i wasn't such a trusting person my thoughts would be something like -
X buys a quantity of fertile eggs from hatchery. Keeps/sells the females $$$$$$$ and unloads the males $ thru a convenient 'friend'

Thanks everyone.

Totally dodge, now I think about it. I got more annoyed afterwards and recontacted the seller asking him if he had kept any and how his turned out. He's fallen strangely silent and not returned my message. I could call him but not sure it's worth the breath. And even if he offered a refund or something it's not worth the 45 min/40 km trip out to see him.

I had another look at them and I am now fairly convinced they are spare males from an egg laying hybrid. From that perspective they are pretty useless to anybody. At around 500 grams at 6 weeks I think the best thing to do would be to stop wasting any more feed and just cull them. I might select the most appealing two or three and keep them on till older to see what they become.

All his info and the chicks conveniently came through his "friend".

If I try Cornish cross meat chicks again I'll obtain them direct from the hatchery myself. But actually I probably won't bother. I'll just play with my Indian Game and/or make hybrids from them.

Any other thoughts, comments or suggestions people?

Cheers.

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"Somewhere over the mountain..." (or was that "rainbow"?)

Here is another photo of a different one of these white chicks. This one is looking decidedly more Rhode Island White, don't you think?



Are the Rhode Island Whites the female (silver) side of the ISA Brown and Hyline parent lines? If so, the males would be "spare" and discarded. Of course it’s possible they are from more than one breeding line.

I'm still going by the assumption that they came from a hatchery. The main reason for this is the guy had a lot of them for sale and I also recall seeing one of the cardboard chick transport carriers at his place that are used by hatcheries to dispatch chick orders.

Funny thing is the guy seemed fairly honest and down to earth. He just had a small brooder setup in his shed and only a small variety of chickens in his back yard.

Is there anything useful you could breed from these if they are hatchery RIW parent line males?

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"Somewhere over the mountain..." (or was that "rainbow"?)

Too many 'ifs' but if they are indeed a RIW line for egg layers from a commercial hatchery, they should carry good genetics for egg laying. It is not normal for them to be released however. So in my mind the provenance remains doubtful.

Hmm, they do have more of that RIR (or similar dual purpose style) shape, rather than a super lean egg layer look (although feathers can be deceptive). I'd be inclined to feed them up and grow them out for a bit longer. You've gotten them to this stage, a bit longer probably won't cost a lot more in feed. While they won't be anything on par with a pure Cobb and the like, you might still be able to get a good meal out of them.

I'd be curious to see what they grew to look like, but that might be a good few months to really get a good idea (if they don't have fast growing commercial genetics). It would still be guess-work at the end of the day though, and even if they did carry a good egg laying gene as Andrew mentioned, it's a harder thing to test given they are all males.

I think sticking to your Indian Game and working on your own meat birds will be best. That way you get to pick and choose the traits you want. More time and effort involved than just buying from a hatchery of course, but more satisfying in a way.

A few years ago I use to get meat bird chicks from Hi Chick and grow them out for food for the family. I tried different ways to grow them out except the free range option I always had mine penned to minimize movement as I didnt want them full of tendons and muscle and sinew lol. I have always successfully grown them beyond 8-9 weeks so not sure why people would say that its just to me if you are going to raise them on the full diet of meat bird starter grower and finisher then that age is the optimum age to process at for tenderness and juiciness. A couple of times I grew them out on purely chick starter extra egg and free range mix only putting them on meatbird finisher for the last two weeks this did slow the growth considerably and I would only get them processed at 12 or so weeks. The birds were so ugly and made a not quite chicken noise I would have a mix of pullets and cockerels unfortunately I never recorded the weights of the meat birds on the different feeds. I believe they were the Cobb 500 breed. I also found different times of the year created different growth spurts.

cheers Judy

These white chicks are now a day shy of 7 weeks old (will be 7 weeks on 25/01/2017). I gave them all a close inspection and weighed them. It appears that there are two distinct separate types here: about half of them are slightly thicker set with yellow legs, pure white feathers, and nice thick red combs - these weigh 550 - 600 grams and most resemble Rhode Island Whites; the rest are slighter with thinner, whiter, slightly willow yellowish legs, pure white feathers, and weigh a minuscule... (wait for it) 250 - 300 grams. They seem to have a purplish white tinge to where their earlobes will grow with smaller, less developed combs - they might resemble Leghorn based layer hybrids.

I have a Rhode Island Red bantam male that is about the same age as these chicks and raised under the same conditions that is keeping neck and neck with the LARGER of these chicks.

I have had no further response from the seller and don't expect to now!

So..... best case scenario: cull most of them and keep one or two of each to see how they turn out! (OR just cull the lot?!)

My curiosity for breeding makes me hope they will turn out to be hybrid layer parent lines, and so form a good option for breeding in the yard. But the truth is I will never be able to fully validate just what they are. And don't forget they are all males.

If some turn out to look like Rhode Island Whites I could cross them to my RIR to create RIW (but you can already get RIW in Australia).

I've got about 50 grower chicks out in the pen right now (I've been too afraid to count them actually - but quite a few). I don't really need some random male white chicks to feed and look after (the feed bill is mounting already and I've got more worthwhile projects on the go).

So people, what do you reckon?

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"Somewhere over the mountain..." (or was that "rainbow"?)

You know sometimes a sow's ear just can't be turned into a silk purse!

Yes, there's some wisdom in that!

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"Somewhere over the mountain..." (or was that "rainbow"?)

Haha

Too many unknowns with keeping them to breed in future. It might be time to cut your losses, especially the small ones. You can probably give the bigger birds more time to grow out and get a meal from, but the small ones I can see no benefit for keeping them going. Even then, if you've got other birds that are showing better growth rates and you actually know their history, then there isn't a lot of point growing the big ones out much longer either.

Really disappointing people can't just be honest. But unfortunately unsurprising!

An update on this (no pic, sorry).

I kept one of these till maturity and still have it in the yard. It is quite small (around 2 kg I would think - haven't weighed it lately), pure white, pale yellow legged, and has the distinctive ISA look about it (if you've seen some ISA males that slip through with the red wing tinges etc. you'll know what I mean).

I am fairly certain that it is an ISA male from a parent or grandparent line, but can't be sure of course. I presume it would be dominant white if so, which could be useful. I have crossed it with a black Langshan and will incubate a few eggs. If it has dominant white then the offspring should be white. If it was recessive white the offspring should be black but be split for white (i.e. carry the recessive white gene but masked by the black).

He's a nice little boy so I've kept him for now. If one day I decide he has no useful purpose he will have to go. I don't keep freeloaders around here (especially roosters!).

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"Somewhere over the mountain..." (or was that "rainbow"?)

Just read the whole thread - utterly suss that they all turned out to be boys. Meat birds are a fairly even mix of boys and girls, although apparently girls are sometimes raised separately for the Asian meat market (apparently more discerning that Europeans); as they're processed at the 6-7 week mark, before gender differences are really marked, the gender's fairly irrelevant.

Luck can, of course, throw you 10/10 boys in any random collection, but it seems pretty peculiar all round to me.