# Raising meat birds



## wannebechickenfarmer (Oct 1, 2012)

Hello all,
I am looking into raising some chickens for the family. I will be having both meat and layers. For the meats, I was thinking about getting 50 cockerels, Buff Orps, because I can get them a lot cheaper. I was wondering if I needed to be concerned in having so many cockerels though. Any thoughs or suggestions?


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## Sundancers (Jun 20, 2012)

wannebechickenfarmer said:


> Hello all,
> I am looking into raising some chickens for the family. I will be having both meat and layers. For the meats, I was thinking about getting 50 cockerels, Buff Orps, because I can get them a lot cheaper. I was wondering if I needed to be concerned in having so many cockerels though. Any thoughs or suggestions?


I've only done it once and that was many moons ago ...

A friend wanted us to go in on halfs but they kept the birds on his farm. I can't remember any big problems ...

You just need to keep in mind the amount of time it takes to harvest and process that numbers of birds. (Have lots of helping hands. ) We started one Friday and finished up late on Sunday. Some of the birds were put in the freezer, the others were canned. (And to be honest, no one wanted to eat chicken for a month. lol)

Best of luck ...


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## wannebechickenfarmer (Oct 1, 2012)

Thanks for the reply. The idea is to freeze enough to have enough chicken to last us a year. We figure about one chicken a week. If I can get everything done early enough in the season, we might even do two flocks of 50, one after the other.


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