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Poultry for meat
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Commercial (non-organic) broiler
operations
We looked at commercial (non-organic) broiler operations and found
that:
- 320 million chickens are raised and killed in Australia every year
and the majority of them are raised in sheds that contain 10,000 to
20,000 birds
- these broilers live only for eight
weeks
- their rapid growth is caused by
selective breeding for meat growth and by the type of feed used
which includes growth stimulants
- this results in baby birds that
have the body of adult birds and the extremely accelerated growth
causes huge health problems
- commercial broilers have legs that cannot support their body weight,
they develop heart problems and many of them die before they even
reach their slaughter age
The situation is shocking and a lot more
info is available on the internet, for example on the Animal
Liberation website. |
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We want to raise our own table birds
in an ethical way
We want to eat meat but we do not want to support commercial
broiler operations. We do not have enough land to raise our own pigs,
sheep or cattle, but we breed poultry. We decided to
breed table birds for our own consumption. This gives us control over
all ethical issues. Our meat roosters live to an age of 20 weeks and are allowed to
free-range and live a natural life.
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Traditional dual purpose
breeds
Traditional breeds such as our Welsummers
and Faverolles were developed for their egg laying and meat qualities.
They are dual purpose breeds and are very well suited to be raised as
table birds. The only drawback is that today’s Welsummers and
Faverolles are not the same type of birds that were around fifty years ago.
When commercial hybrids took over the backyards around the world the
traditional breeds were kept alive mainly by poultry fanciers who kept
them for their looks and who showed them at exhibitions. Egg laying
and meat production qualities suffered even though these were the
original purpose of the breeds!
We tried to get fertile eggs from breeders who have birds that still
show these dual purpose qualities. We do not have the room to set up a
big breeding program with the aim of improving the utility qualities
of the birds that we have. Some breeders are working on this.
In the past Indian or English Game roosters were
used to breed special meat birds. We hatched four Indian Game chicks
in August 2009. Let's see how they develop and if we will be able to
raise meat chooks that are a cross from an Indian Game rooster and a
hen from a traditional breed.
Update May 2010: we did not breed from the Indian Game
roosters. Indian Game are now bred very differently in Australia to
the standards from the past. They have very short legs, are very prone
to hip injuries and not very fertile. The hens only lay around sixty
eggs per year. Our four birds turned out to be all roosters with short
legs and we did not breed with them. We also realized that our
breeding program with our heritage breeds gave us enough surplus
roosters for meat anyway. |
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The Welbar
A number of autosexing breeds were developed in Great Britain in the
1940s. These birds were well known for their egg-laying qualities but
they were also good table birds with the roosters having a weight of 6
to 7 pounds.
Autosexing breeds can be sexed at hatching but they are true breeds,
not hybrids. The Welbar is created from Welsummer roosters and
Plymouth Rock hens. After a number of generations the new traits of
the Welbar are fixed and are reproduced but the offspring reliably.
Our Plymouth Rock hens are exceptionally large birds and our Welsummer
roosters are big birds, too. We are ideally set up to recreate this
now forgotten autosexing breed.
Autosexing would allow us to determine the sex of the chicks at day
one. The advantage here is that we could keep the males and raise them
to table size, and that we could sell the females (guaranteed!) as egg
layers when they are a few weeks old.
Update May 2010: we still think that
it would be great if dedicated breeders would recreate the Welbar, but
we realized that we ourselves do not have the room to keep the
number of roosters required by such a breeding program. |
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