Utility Poultry.

[graham]

Hi, dose any one here keep utility poultry,or are interested in it.If so what birds do you keep.
I have hubbards a comercial hybrid,mainly bread for meat but I have found the hens to be very good layers.I also keep Indian Game, copper blue and a black marran,orpingtons,plymoth rock light sussex and others.

Graham.

[chrismahon]

Hi Graham. We have Blue and Gold Laced Wyandottes, Buff Orpingtons (good laying strain) and Black Transylvanian Naked Necks which have just arrived. That's more than enough for us. Best layers we have are Brown English Leghorn Bantams.

[Philcott]

My LF Barnebars are utility birds as are my welbars (in spite of being only bantam size!) I know the latter is not dual purpose, but excellent egg layers non the less. (going to market the bantam boys as " pensioner sized chicken meal" ) and before anyone thinks I'm being ageist - I'm a pensioner myself!

Am thinking of entering Barnie and his ladies in the Utility Class at the next show I go to!

[darkbrowneggs]

I keep English Cuckoo Marans which I find a really good dual purpose utility bird.

They lay a good quantity of eggs (for a heavy traditional breed) and the eggs sell for premium prices, even one or two in a box increases selling price. The surplus males and older layers can be used for meat both reaching a good size, and the meat is high quality, and has very little fat. All round good garden or barnyard fowl.

[Chuck]

Utility fowl: Egg laying, meat and dual purpose categories. Utility = useful and there are becoming less and less useful pure breed hens due to indiscriminate mating. Too many people can't tell you whether they've got the utility strain of a breed and there is a lot of crossing of show and utility which greatly reduces the utility value of the offspring.
Orpingtons which were once a fine old utility breed have been bred for size, shape and fluff for so long that their utility value has been lost.
The only Wyandottes that remain under the utility banner are the utility Whites.
Other utility strains exist in:
Leghorns, White, Brown and Black
Sussex, Light, Buff and White
RIR
Cream Legbar
Marans, Copper Tone and French
Barred Plymoth Rock
Welsummer, Standard and Silver Duckwing
Araucana
There is even a utility strain of Ancona Bantams.
Some of the Rare Breeds had a fine utility history but the rarer a breed becomes, loss of stamina, loss of a large gene pool makes the utility value very poor in most cases. Eventually the breed is kept purely for it's rarity value.

The Sussex breed bred for many years as a dual purpose bird has lost much of it's meat producing qualities except for a very few strains which continue.

[graham]

Hi,I first kept orpitons purely because I liked the look of them,and I was very pleased with the size of egg they layed.I'm a big lad and I like a big egg.I eventualy started breeding them,this lead to spare cockerals and what to do with them.Orpingtons are hard to sex,so need to be grown on before you can tell either way.I realy don't like the idea of killing chicks before they have had a chance of life either.
So I decided to eat them,this is what sparked my interest in utility birds in the true meaning of the word.As an eating bird the buff orpinton was a bit of a dissopitment.
Then a youg lady called Kelly introduced me to the hubbard which is basicly a free range broiler,the amount of breast meat on these is amazzing.If you dont over feed them and give them room to exercice they don't go off there leggs at all and the hens lay lots of loverly big egg,which makes them utility in my book.
I had a spare copper blue marran cockeral that I had been using trying to create my own laying hybrids.I crossed this with the hubbard hens and the results have been great a slightly slower growing bird,but with far more flavour.I raised several last year and they all suppriseingly came out the same.
I have the incy full again with 25 eggs.

Graham.

[Chuck]

Some interesting crosses Graham. The old meat breeds and dual purpose ones are very disappointing in the amount of flesh on them compared to modern breeds but most people consider the taste to be better, probably because they took longer to mature. It is a good thing to eat surplus males though I can understand why many people don't wish to do it.
As I said in my previous post, utilty has three categories: egg laying, meat and dual purpose.
If you want a big egg then utility White Leghorns lay the biggest eggs I've ever produced and consistently too. As I sell eggs to help balance the books, I need to ensure that the breeds I keep will supply me with a lot of eggs throughout the year.

[graham]

Hi,here is a picture of one of the chickens I put in the incy back in January now fully grown CBM/hubbard cross.

[chrismahon]

Fine looking chap Graham. Has the look of a Leghorn about him. What do the hens lay like?

[Wrigley62]

That is a beautiful bird!