Raising Broilers & The Best Age to Butcher Chickens

When it comes to raising broiler chickens there are some things to consider before you order those day-old chicks. Let’s take a look at raising broiler chickens and the best age to butcher chickens so you can set your butcher date.

The Best Age to Butcher Chickens: Breed Matters

• Hybrid Cornish Cross Meat Chickens- Ready in 8-10 weeks
• Hybrid Freedom Ranger Broiler Chickens- Ready in 12-14 weeks
• Heritage Dual-Purpose Breeds- Can vary but are usually ready in 16-20 weeks.

Raising Broilers & The Best Age to Butcher Meat Chickens

All broiler chickens are simply not the same. Some hybrid breeds will grow out considerably faster than a heritage, dual-purpose breed. If a fast turnaround time is important to you, you’ll want to consider raising a hybrid meat chicken breed. 

Hybrid Broiler Chicken Breeds: Best Age to Butcher Chickens

When it comes to hybrid meat chicken breeds there are two basics to choose from: the Cornish Cross broiler and the Freedon Ranger.  We’ve raised both on our farm. They both have pros and cons, different growth rates, and relatively short lives. 

Best Age to Butcher Chickens: Cornish Cross

These birds have rapid growth, finish in less time, and give an abundance of chicken breast.  Cornish Cross meat birds are ready for their slaughter dates in 8-10 weeks. They will dress out between 4-8 lbs, depending on how they are fed and kept.  

Cornish Cross birds have been known to have their health problems though.  They can suffer from heart failure, heat stroke, and leg issues. 

All of these issues can be managed pretty well though if you are particular about giving them good care. If you’d like to learn more about Cornish Cross birds you can read Do Cornish Cross Chickens Lay Eggs: All About Meat Chickens. 

Best Age to Butcher Chickens: Freedom Rangers

The Freedom Ranger is an excellent choice for hybrid broiler chickens.  They tend to have more dark meat than the Cornish Cross but take a little longer to grow out.  

You can expect to raise them for 12-14 weeks.  This breed of chicken is worth the extra time if you love flavorful dark meat. These hardy birds are more active than the Cornish Cross and great at foraging for bugs out on pasture.  

​Cornish Cross Vs. Freedom Ranger: Finding the Best Age to Butcher Chickens

A couple of years back, we raised both of these breeds side by side for the first time. We did this under the same conditions to find the best age to butcher chickens and just to see how they’d turn out.

It was a fun little experiment that taught us a good bit about these hybrid chicken breeds. You can see the Chicken Butcher Day video at the end of this post.

Dual-Purpose Breed: Best Age to Butcher Chickens

The best age to butcher chickens that fall into the dual-purpose category is around 20 weeks of age. There are a whole slew of chickens that fall into the dual purpose bird category that are great for egg and meat production. A few are considered to be the most popular of the dual-purpose breeds. 

Just know that these heritage breeds are not as meaty as the Cornish Cross or Freedom Ranger. The plus side is that heritage birds breed back true and give fresh eggs. This makes heritage birds an extremely sustainable choice.  

Heritage Meat Birds (Dual Purpose Breed)

• Naked Neck Turken
• Brahma
• Delaware
• Bresse
• Buff Orpington
• Jersey Giants

​If you are curious and still haven’t found the right meat chicken to raise on your homestead, you can check out  The 25 Best Meat Chickens to Raise for Backyard Homesteads. Just remember that the best age to butcher chickens will vary among different breeds.

​Ordering Meat Chickens

Now that you have a better idea of the best age to butcher chickens, you can decide what is best for your homestead. Now it’s time for the fun part. Shopping for day-old chicks! To be sure you know what you are ordering you may want to read What Are Straight Run Chickens? Know The Pros and Cons

Chicks of all sorts can be ordered from the hatchery.  They get delivered right to your local United States Post Office for pickup. 

I prefer to use a hatchery in my region so it’s less travel time for the chicks.  The time of year is also important.  

Unfortunately, I learned the cold weather lesson the hard way.  Ordering any chicks, especially Cornish Cross meat chicks, in the winter is a risky choice. They do not have a heat source that travels with them. 

How Many Meat Birds Do You Need

Every homestead is different. Around here, we eat about four to five whole birds a month. For this reason, I always like to order a batch of sixty in the early springtime. 

This gives us enough chicken for a whole year!  In my opinion, you just can’t beat the fact that you can raise enough of your own chickens, for the year, in 8-10 short weeks. 

Caring for Meat Chicks: Brooder Set Up

By the time your chicks get to the post office, they will be hungry, thirsty, and ready for some warmth. Before hatching they do absorb enough nutrients to last them several days until they can get into a brooder.  

The best advice I have for hardy chicks is to have the brooder set up and ready to go before you get the call from the post office.  It’ll make for some happy little chicks. 

Basic Brooder Requirements

• A brooder box of sorts that is free from drafts but still has good ventilation to avoid high levels of ammonia. 
• Clean water that they cannot fall into. Baby chicks can die from being wet and cold. They can also easily drown in the water. You can read about the Best Chickens Waterers here.
• A SECURE heat source.  Plan for one heat lamp for every 25 chicks.  For a safer option, you can use a heat plate.
• ​A high-quality chick starter
• Clean Bedding

Feeding Chicks in the Brooder

For at least the first week of life, keep those feeders full 24/7, giving them free access to feed.  Truth be told, I like to feed them this way through their second week of life.  Once you get past that point, keep the feeders full from sun up to sun down. 

To learn more about raising chicks and setting up your brooder you can read How Long Do Chickens Need a Heat Lamp: Raising Baby Chicks. If a quick video is your thing, you can see my brooder set up and unboxing of a box of chicks if you are curious.

Taking Chicks Out of the Brooder

Meat chickens can come out of the brooder much faster than your egg-laying chickens.  Depending on the temperatures outside, I aim to have mine in the chicken tractor by 2-3 weeks of age.  

If the nighttime temps are still pretty cold I will run a heat lamp in the brooder so they don’t smother each other trying to stay warm.  Providing them with protection from the rain is also important at this stage. 

To Free Range, Chicken Tractor, or Chicken Coop?

Once again, every homestead is different. How you house and keep your meat chickens falls into the camp of you-do-you.

All three ways have pros and cons. Either way, just be sure they have access to plenty of shade and water to avoid heat stress. 

Free Range Meat Chickens

Free-range meat chickens can be pretty low maintenance but be prepared when you walk through the yard. They will be constantly underfoot waiting for food. 

Predator attacks are also a common problem to think about.  Keeping a livestock guardian dog for protection is valuable for free range chickens.

Raising Meat Chickens in a Chicken Tractor

Using a chicken tractor is a very popular option.  It eliminates having to clean a coop, as it’s moved every day, giving chickens access to fresh grass. It’s also an amazing way to fertilize your pasture or yard. 

The downside is you either have to build one or buy one, which can get pricey.  They can also get heavy quickly if you aren’t careful when building them. 

Raising Broiler Chickens in a Stationary Coop

Yep, it can be done.  Our first batch of meat chickens were raised this way.  They grew out nice and plump as they had very little exercise.  

Not me though, I had plenty of exercise cleaning their coop out, every day for the last several weeks. Meat chickens poop a lot. It can get pretty gross.

What About Feed and Water?

Meat chickens drink a lot of water. Our usual batch of 60 meat chickens will go through about 7-8 gallons a day.  Cool fresh water is super important as they can have a heat stroke or heart attacks without it. 

What to Feed Meat Chickens

With their super fast growth, broiler chickens do require feed with higher protein.  We raise our meat chickens on 21% chick starter feed from start to finish.

They go through feed pretty quickly.  To get a better idea, you can check out Raising Broilers: How Much Feed Do Meat Chickens Eat?

Feed Costs to Raise Meat Chickens: Is it Worth It?

Well, we started raising our own meat chickens about 8 years ago and never looked back.  For us, we’d rather spend a tad more and gain the satisfaction of knowing that our chicken was humanely raised in a healthy environment, right in our backyard by us.

Are the feed costs worth it? Absolutely. 

The Best Age to Butcher Meat Chickens

Now that you know about the different breeds, how to raise them, and the best age to butcher chickens your butcher date has arrived.  Learning how to humanely butcher meat breeds on your homestead is a valuable skill.  

It only takes a few key pieces of equipment and some basic knowledge to have you on your way to further providing for your homestead.  

Have the Butchering Equipment Ready Before Butcher Day

• kill cone on a post
• scalding pot
• thermometer
• plucker (or hand pluck as Grandma did)
• several sharp knives
• evisceration table
• buckets
• cooler
• ice

How to Butcher Chickens: The Best Age to Butcher Chickens

Learning how to butcher chickens is pretty easy.  Once you learn the butchering process and have a bit of practice you will be able to butcher quite a few in an afternoon. 

You’ll want to start by putting the chicken upside down in the kill cone.  Swifty remove its head with a humanely sharp butchering knife. The cone will keep the chicken contained as it bleeds out and goes through the process of being culled. 

After several minutes, you can remove the chicken by its feet from the kill cone.  It’s now time for the most important step in butchering a chicken, scalding.  Having the water temperature right around 150-155*F is ideal for the best scald.  

Too hot or too long of a scald can cause skin tears and premature cooking. Too short or cold of a scald will give a bird that is harder to pluck. 

Our general rule of thumb is to submerge the chicken by its feet swish it into the scalding water for 3-5 seconds, lift it out for a few, then repeat.  After the second dip if a wing feather pulls out easily, your bird is properly scaled. If not dip it again for a couple of seconds.  

Next up is plucking, then eviscerating, and doing a final clean-up of the bird.  To get a better idea of the whole process, we wrote an ebook just for you, From Hatchery to Butcher Day.

It is everything you need to know, in one place, for raising and butchering meat chickens in your own backyard.  It gives an up-close look with very thorough explanations and pictures of the whole process. 

You can always take a look at a typical chicken butcher day on The GrahamStead!

Eating Homegrown Chicken

Once you taste and see the quality of homegrown chicken you’ll never want store-bought chicken again. I know we didn’t. We have a few favorite ways to cook our chicken, it just depends on what we are in the mood for.

• Spatch Cocked and grilled
• Roasted in the convection oven
• Shredded in the crock pot
• And we always save the bones for making a large batch of bone broth.  I actually have a batch on the stove as I am writing this.

Some Old-School Chicken Terminology We’ve Gotten Away From

• Broiler/Fryer – A young chicken less than 10 weeks of age. Weighing up to 4 1/2 pounds when butchered.
• Game Hen – A smaller broiler/fryer weighing around 2 pounds. These are usually stuffed and roasted whole.
• Roaster – A broiler chicken between 8 and 12 weeks old weighing 5 pounds or more. These are great roasted whole.
• Capon – A rooster that has been castrated and is less than 4 months of age. They weigh about 4 to 7 pounds.  Not very common these days. 
• Stewing or Baking Hen – A laying hen, like a Rhode Island Red, around 10 months to 1 1/2 years old. Usually, a tough bird that does not give a lot of meat and is less tender than young chickens, making it good for stew meat. Some folks will even process their old rooster for stew meat and bone broth.

Raising Healthier, Happy Chickens

At the end of the day, I can honestly say that I find comfort in knowing that my chickens, and all of our meat animals for that matter, got to live their best life doing what they naturally do with unlimited outdoor access.  They weren’t confined, but raised humanely on fresh pasture grass, in the fresh air, and in the sunshine.  

Raising Animals for Meat

It’s a responsibility that we do not take lightly but one that our homestead feels called to do.  After all, we feel like it is our responsibility to feed our family, not the job of the chain grocery store.  

It is also part of being a good steward of the land while we have it.  Using it to produce a product to nurture our bodies, while those animals give back to the health of the land.  If we are just good stewards with it, it will produce abundantly.

Happy Homesteading & Chicken Keeping!

Jenny @ The GrahamStead Family Farm

Jenny and her family have been homesteading for more than two decades. They currently live on a 10-acre farm in Northeast Florida, which they built from the ground up, nine years ago.

They grow 100% of their meat and most of their vegetables. With a small herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle, pastured poultry, sheep, and seasonal pigs, they not only meet their family’s meat needs but also sell their surplus to the local community. They are dedicated to sustainable practices like making compost, seed saving, and processing much of their garden and animal harvests at home. You can find Jenny wandering through her garden, making herbal tinctures, preserving food, making bone broth, and one of Jenny’s favorite hobbies, tanning all types of hides.