Culling Male Chicks

This subject has been floating around in my mind since last year, and to be honest I have been a little scared to bring it up, because I didn't want to upset people or start a heated discussion. But I am curious as to opinions on this and what they do.

I know that hatchery's do this, but was curious to if any smaller breeders do this. Cull male chicks. I know that certain breeds are feather sexable, or you can sexlink breed them so that you can tell those boys from day one.

What about the person who doesn't have a lot of room to raise a bunch of roosters?

Selling female chicks doesn't seem to be much of a problem, but let's face it, not a lot of people want a bunch of roosters.

And then comes the question. If you know from day one or a few days later which chicks are boys, and someone wants to buy chicks from you, is it fair to sell the chicks as mixed unsexed? This was something I had a problem with last year. I had some cochins that were sexlinked, and I just couldn't bring myself to sell what I knew was a male chick to someone who had no use for them. (So I kept back the males, and still have them). But then you are stuck with a bunch of roosters yourself.

I'm not saying that I am going to cull those little male chicks. I have a hard time personally killing a healthy chick. It just seems like such a waste of a life. But then you grow those little boys, feeding, watering and caring for them just to kill them in the long run.

This brings the question to mind, If you find a use for them as babies (ex. trap line bait, reptile food) or as a dinner on the plate, is there a big difference morally?

What to do with all those male chicks....

Just wondering what peoples views were on this subject. (And if it gets too heated, the Mods have my blessings to delete the subject. =) )

Personally, I think I'll stick to the "Rooster Soup" method. Roosters are generally a couple pounds heavyer than a hen, at least. I was late last year and myne had been crowing for about two weeks when they went to freezer-land. So far I haven't found them too tough, a little chewy-er than the storebought franken-chickens, but I dont mind. I hear that if you do them just before they start to crow, they are stil pretty tender.

It depends on how much space you have I guess

I have struggled with this myself silkiebantam.
We raised some sex linked babies last year, with the idea of culling the boys at hatch and keeping only the girls. I did cull most of the boys at hatch, thankfully it wasnt many, kept a half dozen or so to see how they matured out and if it would be more bennificial to butcher for food later on.
My thoughts are much like yours, if you cull at day old or butcher for your table later on what is the difference?
My biggest issue with not killing at birth is you quickly get alot of roosters, last year we started butchering younger, around 14 weeks, before they get really aggressive with eachother, we only took the breast, legs/thighs for us and froze the rest whole for the cats for winter. I got a good amount of meat and the cats get to eat all winter. I feel much better about doing this than killing at birth.
Most of my breeds are not sexable until at least 6 weeks old, so to raise them another 8 or so weeks then butchering works out for me.

Interesting topic silkie. I've always wondered what other breeders do myself.

Personally, I grow all the boys up and give them away to be eaten or send them to freezer camp myself. Knowing I've given them a good (if short) life just being chickens scratching in the dirt and doing chicken things all day long makes me content.

Space is very much an issue though. I try not to hatch/buy more birds than I can handle but sometimes my chicken math isn't so hot.

I have never done it before but am planning to with the hatch we have in now. I simply don't have the room to raise a bunch of roos this spring and have the freezer half full of roos from last fall. I will be keeping a few roos but as far as our white x brown leghorn roos and Isa Brown x marans, I plan to cull them. Because we have a fur farm, we have a gas killer that will simply put them to sleep so there will be no trauma involved.

In the past I have culled them as humanely as possible. I'm not into sexing at a young age and the types we raise are not sex linked so they are grown out until sexing is obvious. I'm hoping to put the extra roosters in with the meat chickens for processing if they do not sell.

I culled this year because I knew I wouldn't have time to butcher in the fall. Especially my brown layer/maran cross experiment. There just wasn't any point in feeding roosters that I had no use for. The purebreds I would wait to try and pick out the best to keep. I try to be humane of course.

Flicker Chick wrote:

Personally, I grow all the boys up and give them away to be eaten or send them to freezer camp myself. Knowing I've given them a good (if short) life just being chickens scratching in the dirt and doing chicken things all day long makes me content.

I agree. We are lucky enough to have space to raise these dudes (kind of). I couldn't kill a healthy chick that every chance of a normal life, male or female. A normal life where they get to free range outside is as good as I can do for them. I feel like I am reason they were brought into the world, I should give them every chance of a reasonable existence.

I figure part of having chickens is having extra roosters and as such, I am not attempting any meat crosses as we always have lots of pure bred roos in the fall. It is the price of keeping the hens. We have learned to cook them well so they are tasty, tender and enjoyable.

I do tend to end up with more roosters when selling chicks 'cos some of my breed like penedesencas I can sex almost immediately and feel bad letting too many roos go. Fortunately processing at 14-16 weeks still result in a useful bird with those. Interesting thread.

I think this is the ongoing debate about chicken keeping. No straight forward answer. If you have lots of room and are happy to eat surplus roos, there is not much to struggle with. But if you have restricted room and do not enjoy eating utility roos, now you have issues.

We do not eat utility roos. If I can raise (what I consider) to be excellent meat in 10 weeks at X dollars per pound, I have NO INTEREST in raising smaller (lighter) birds of lesser quality for a longer period and at a higher cost per pound. This is my personal take on the situation and I am not trying to convince anyone to see it my way, just sharing what my experiences have been.

Having said that...we do not cull baby roos because we can't tell who of our mutts are roos and hens until they are quite big. I think it would be better to cull them as babies, the smaller the better. Because once they are big and it's time to cull I make Hubby do it and he HATES to do it and there is more of a struggle and...it's just bad. So even though I say we won't raise roos, we do. Every year. While saying we won't ever do it again, we do. When they start beating on each other they do get culled and thrown in the bush. So I spend my time and money to raise birds I toss in the bush for passing scavengers.

As for something to do with culls, there used to be a bird rehabilitation sanctuary near here that would take culls to feed recovering owls and hawks. Some people feel this is a good use of resources (culls). Others feel this is training birds of prey to develop a taste for chicken!

I do not and will not eat surplus roosters. I say I will kill them as soon as I can identify them. But I don't and feed them for months only to toss in the bush. I share your pain!

I don't really have an issue with this as I can always use roosters for butchering and my butcher pen is always a mixed pen anyways. I do wonder if a person had the room to hatch them out if you gave a "discount" on the cost of the chick if people would purchase the roos as butcher birds. I had thought of doing that if I ever got going with the chickens more, but like I said as of now, I have no problem raising the roosters and butchering them for us. Or should I say, I have no room issues of raising the roos!!

I would be happy to sell them at a discount or even give them away when small if I knew someone who would take good care of them. The issue I have with that around here is that there are several people who are quick to want a bargain but they don't keep and raise and kill them (even if they say they are going to). There are several local folk who treat chickens like yardsale goods and sell them around and around the community - and some of those folk don't take very good care of their birds. So that leaves me with having to be very selective about who I even tell that I will have extra chicks. I'm planning to cull this time (though I've never done it before)rather than let them go to that circus! I shudder to think where some of my birds have ended up in the past. The only way I know to get around that is to put high enough prices on my chicks to (hopefully) prevent people from just picking up chicks because they see a "bargain" that they can make money off of by reselling.

well said uno.... if people seriously wanted them free i would happily give them away for people to eat but people dont seem to want them so i am stuck with them and 15 dollar a bag food is to expensive to feed them, i dont want to eat them either we dont butcher ourselfs and it be a waste of money in my eyes to butcher a 3 lb bird..lol so i would rather cull and feed the dogs/ect someone will eat them, cause i dont have the room to grow them out for 8 months.

silkiebantam wrote:
This brings the question to mind, If you find a use for them as babies (ex. trap line bait, reptile food) or as a dinner on the plate, is there a big difference morally?

What to do with all those male chicks....

I think we all struggle with the problem of too many roos. So far I've been able to use all my extra roos to feed the family...big hungry teenagers eat a lot!!
But many breeds are just not well suited for the dinner table. I personally think if there is a way to make use of them, even as pet or reptile food, that is preferrable to knocking them on the head and throwing them in the bush. At least they have served some sort of purpose.

Sorry to sound like an idiot as I'm still new to this whole thing, but why would roos not be good for butchering... do they taste different? My plans, when I got my flock going, was to butcher the roos for meat -- I thought that was what everyone did and that that was the point of roos! Hrm, some books are misleading!

I know I have to sound like the biggest fool.

Sweetened wrote:Sorry to sound like an idiot as I'm still new to this whole thing, but why would roos not be good for butchering... do they taste different? My plans, when I got my flock going, was to butcher the roos for meat -- I thought that was what everyone did and that that was the point of roos! Hrm, some books are misleading!

I know I have to sound like the biggest fool.

First off you do not sound like a fool, It is not that roosters are not good for butchering. If done young enough or cooked properly they can be very great roasting chickens. The downfall to heritage roosters is you do have to grow them a very long time compared to commercial meat birds. I find they are fighting with each other so much before they are old enough to have their full potential of meat on them that I butcher them early.
I enjoy the meat I get off my roosters, it keeps us in chicken peices all year.
But I do also grow the meat birds for our roasting chickens and not use the roosters.

If a person has adequate space and time, raising heritage roosters for meat is definately the thing to do. BUT if a person is limited to space then some do opt for the culling young.

Hidden River wrote:

First off you do not sound like a fool, It is not that roosters are not good for butchering. If done young enough or cooked properly they can be very great roasting chickens. The downfall to heritage roosters is you do have to grow them a very long time compared to commercial meat birds. I find they are fighting with each other so much before they are old enough to have their full potential of meat on them that I butcher them early.
I enjoy the meat I get off my roosters, it keeps us in chicken peices all year.
But I do also grow the meat birds for our roasting chickens and not use the roosters.

If a person has adequate space and time, raising heritage roosters for meat is definately the thing to do. BUT if a person is limited to space then some do opt for the culling young.

Someone once told me a question not asked is a door not opened, and like my mouth, I open a lot of doors

I understand the fighting, though I (foolishly) thought the push to fatten roos got there before they were fighting, maybe just as they started Phew. Some misunderstanding on my part.

I am with you Sweetened, I think you are on the right track. We originally wanted heritage chickens for eggs and meat and still do. We eat all the roosters (that we don't sell live over the summer) if it takes the two of us all year. And they are delicious. Our breed selection has evolved to breeds that produce useful table males except for 2 pet breeds we really don't breed much.

I have written more and deleted it, I'll leave at I just am surprised and disappointed so many small scale breeders, hobby farmers are doing this.

Sweetened, with a lot of heritage breeds, it is difficult to fatten them quickly, they just don't grow that fast. Being organized and having a pen or separate area ready for them at 12-16 weeks when they start to bother their female hatchmates really is a good idea because it may be another 1-2 months before they are worth harvesting (depending on the breed).

Sweetened...this can be a circular debate and there is more to consider than the 'books' tell you.

Some people eat their surplus roosters. I do not. I have. I will not do it again. When I raise a specific meat bird, bred and designed to be a big, fat, mindless eating blob, I do this because I want a whole roasting chicken. And that is what I get. A plump, round, tasty, picture perfect bird that I pop in the oven and pull out hours later in its golden, moist glory. This is what I want, this is how I cook and serve chicken and this is what I acheive by raising meat birds. My eating and cooking style is NOT set up to deal with a dual purpose rooster. And while a surplus dual purpose roo is technically edible, he is a different breed of cat.

Many of the Dual Roo Likers (we shall call them DROOLS for now)understand that they might have to deal with this fella differently than a fat, tender roaster. He might be parted out and used in stew fashion. Canned. Cooked for 27 hours in a slow cooker. Blasted into molecular mush in a pressure cooker. Ground up and burgerized. There are many, many ways to utilize the left over roosters of any breed. Just not your best bet for a plump Sunday roast.

Evaluate your own cooking and eating styles and what your expectations are of the finished carcass. If you are kitchen creative and sauce things and maridane, then you are in the right place. If you are boring, like me, and just want to slap it in a roaster, shut the oven door and not look at it for 2 hours...then you might think about meat birds only.

The other question is cost. You can put a meatbird in the freezer in 6-12 weeks, depending on how big you want them. No dual roo is going to come anywhere close to the weihgts at 6-10 weeks that meatbirds will attain. Nope, you'll feed a dualer for MONTHS...and he'll still be gangly and lean. Add in the cost of having your roo butchered at a facility (if you are not doing it yourself at home) and you have very expensive, mediocre meat. Edible...but costly per pound and not what is considered a quality roaster.

I am not saying you can't eat them. Many, many, many do very happily! Just know what you'll end up with, how you need to cook it and how long it will take to grow and that it will likely look like one of those rubber chickens from the gag shop. Wait...did I say that outloud?

BUT...experience is the best teacher. Try it! You have nothing to lose and you will have something to talk about the next time someone else asks this question. By the way, asking questions is why forums like this exist. There are no stupid questions!

uno wrote:Sweetened...this can be a circular debate and there is more to consider than the 'books' tell you.

I wasn't trying to debate, I just, admittedly, learned the "truth about Santa" as it were. Books, as you said, can only tell you so much, which I've understood. Reading about butchering is easy, the act (especially for someone who rescues, rehabs and rehomes as much as I have over the years) is maybe not so much. Unfortunately, my social network is my work (with people who are fine with being disconnected with their food, have never worn anything but high heels and so on, albeit lovely people), and my DH family who farms monsanto and cattle but won't share info on the farming cattle part!

Live and learn! That's why I'm here.

SOrry, debate might have been the wrong word. Discussion. This can be a circular discussion. With more than one correct answer.

uno wrote:SOrry, debate might have been the wrong word. Discussion. This can be a circular discussion. With more than one correct answer.

Phew. Thought I offended someone first day in!

I'm certainly surprised that so many people don't find heritage roosters to be fit for the table. Regularly I butcher roosters up to 2 years of age to eat. The meat is darker and is more flavourful maybe it is an aquired taste for people who eat meat birds. I also butcher egg eating hens probably the oldest was 3 years old and they have so much fat compared to a cockerel or rooster.

As for fighting among roosters when growing out all breeds that I keep are reasonably docile, and as long as there is room for them all they get along fine if you keep pullets out of the mix.


I prefer to support the breeds I raise by using meat and eggs for the table. The way I butcher (skinning) it takes only about 20 minutes from running around in the pen to in the fridge. I have butchered with plucking using an electric plucker and found that it was far too much work and time consuming.

I have never raised meat birds but I have done crossings betweeen my breeds and have noticed the increase of growth and overall size between them and a regular heritage bird.

Back to the topic I don't think there is anything wrong with disposing of male chicks as you see fit because you are the breeder and are responsible for what you do with your culls.

Sweetened wrote:

uno wrote:SOrry, debate might have been the wrong word. Discussion. This can be a circular discussion. With more than one correct answer.

Phew. Thought I offended someone first day in!

Ah Sweetened, you have come to a place where you will see all sides of the coins, on all things and many things. This is a most friendly community and there is a rare occasion where one has been offended, that is just not how it works here. A whole whack of open minded people, who are mature enough to have open-mindedness about things in life. Lots of good discussions with lots of debate sometimes, but it is always done on a most friendly manner. So, don't worry, not likely that you could really ruffle too many feathers, just no so in our little friendly forum. Too many things in life to do to bother with taking the time and energy to have offence such us dry.

There is a huge difference between the meat bird and the heritage birds that we eat. Pros and cons for surely. I have been eating my cockerels that I had professionally processed, cost me $4 a bird to have process and government inspected, plus the cost of raising them to the age of about 20 weeks. But I don't kill male chicks, I like to raise them up (and can do it cause I have room to grow them on) and then eat them. My very limited experience with home grown cockerels has worked out great for me. But then the breeds I have (only 4) have big carcasses and big breasts, so I would certainly say they are dual purpose cause the hens are good layers too. Have a wonderful and beautiful day, CynthiaM.

Chantecler_eh? wrote:I'm certainly surprised that so many people don't find heritage roosters to be fit for the table. Regularly I butcher roosters up to 2 years of age to eat. The meat is darker and is more flavourful maybe it is an aquired taste for people who eat meat birds. I also butcher egg eating hens probably the oldest was 3 years old and they have so much fat compared to a cockerel or rooster.

Back to the topic I don't think there is anything wrong with disposing of male chicks as you see fit because you are the breeder and are responsible for what you do with your culls.

Right, on-topic, this has kind of strayed (someone start a new topic about meat birds versus heritage birds, or has there one been already?). I have to comment too, about old birds. I took some of my processed birds last fall to my Sister on the coast (the one that used to live on our farm with all her kids, smiling). I took her two of the youngsters (they were about 20 weeks old) and one old gal, probably in fourth year, she was not laying anymore and had been given to me (barred rock), didn't like her personality, so she didn't get to live out her life here with the other two barred gals. My Sister told me that that hen tasted the best of them all . I thought that cool and she said she was not tough. Go figure, but something had to be said about that ol' gal, glad she graced her table so well.

I had thoughts of when I began to raise lots of buff orpingtons this year that I would cull the males as they hatched, but then....after eating one the other day (he was 20 weeks old, along with his buckeye pals of the same age), I won't be culling any. I will raise them for my table, they were freakin' good!!!

Yep, off topic somewhat. Someone get a post going about the meat versus heritage birds we eat, pleeeeeze. Beautiful days, CynthiaM.

This is not to re open the debate. This is for those who are going to do in a roo and eat him. We favour the chopping block and axe method, as in, chop off his head while holding his feet.
After he stops flopping, we cut off the wings at the first joint, cut off the legs at the hip and cut the carcass in two cross ways to clean the guts out. This makes a cut about at the level of the gizzard, so the smelly intestines come out in one piece with out leaking. Since we do a lot of them and run out of freezer space, we throw out the pelvis and lower spine. This allows us to skin, remove the shanks and tuck the legs into the body cavity. Since the wings are only the meatiest first joint, they don't stick out much and take up too much freezer space. At cooking time, we do stew a lot, as we love stew. Sometimes I grind one, after boning it, and brown the meat with some onions, add some raw carrots, make gravy and simmer a while. Then I top it with left over mashed potatoes and brown it under the broiler. Sometimes I boil one till the breast is tender, then take the meat off in large pieces and press it in a bowl so that it sets up chilled in an easy to slice chunk for sandwiches for lunches. The leg meat makes nice sweet and sour chicken balls. What do other folks do?