Chickens are nice, meat birds on the other hand are disgusting and filthy. We did two seasons raising them for the freezer. 25 each time. It’s sad what has been done breeding the meat bird. They grow to slaughter age in 6 weeks, and all they do is eat and poop. They are gross to take are of and by 6 weeks some of them are almost not able to walk. They are bred to grow fast. Having a bath of laying hens would be much nicer, you’d get eggs and could go outside when you wanted a fresh chicken for dinner.
I think it’s sad what’s been done to breeding and raising ALL of the meat animals. When I was young, meat was much tastier and more satisfying - beef, pork, lamb all had a nice amount of fat; and you didn’t eat as much, because you were satisfied with a reasonable amount.
(Sometimes I think that in many areas, we never truly ‘progress’; we just make tradeoffs, some pretty questionable...)
-JT
There is an intermediate “meat bird” that I raised. They take about 2-3 weeks longer to hit broiler size, and top out at 9-11 pounds DRESSED. They don’t have the heart and leg problems of the current White Cornish Cross Broilers.
Not sure where else you can find them, but Whelp Hatchery sells them as “Slow Cross White Broilers”.
I still have one that is 4 years old, and she can run, and can fly short distances; she lays a huge, light tan egg almost every day of the laying season. The rest of the flock are Black Jersey Giants.
I’m so used to the size of my birds that I accidentally insulted one of our neighbors by asking if I could borrow one of her “bantams”, if she had a broody one. She has regular sized Rhode Islands. LOL