Hi

I am looking forward to interacting with like minded people on this forum and expanding my learning and therefore my skills. At the moment I'm wanting rid of my young crowing roosters, but realize that I should be fattening them for my table. I have plenty of walnuts and thought they would be a good fattening agent together with other stuff. Has anyone else used walnuts to fatten roosters?

I'm also in the process of changing my house around in order to be more self-sufficient. I have a small wood stove with an oven but it does not have a wetback and it's very hot to cook on.

A big 'Hi' to everyone here.

Hi and welcome! Yes fatten those young roosters up asap! What breed or size are they at the moment?

Whilst walnuts may be a useful addition to their diet they are not going to make a huge lot of difference to how quickly they fatten up! I just looked up the nutritional data on walnuts nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut-and-seed-products/3138/2 and whilst they do contain some good stuff, like Omega 3 fatty acids in a cup of shelled nuts (117gms) they only contain 8% protein and some fat but are low in carbohdrates.

A cup full of nuts would be most of your birds daily consumption-so it would be very unbalanced food for them.

I would suggest that you feed them on as a high a protein and fat diet as you can and fatten them quickly! You can use a commercial feed like Meat bird crumbs which is at least 22% protein, or add things such as peas, fat, milk, or scraps that are high in fat/meat to a grain mix such as PBM, and some walnuts. You can feed a high protein layer feed if that is all you can get-say 17% protein, but they don't need the calcium in layers feed. They probably need around 150 to 200gms per day, but that is only a guess as I don't know how old or big they are already.

Feeding them as much as you can for as short a time as possible, and keep them warmer, especially at night-will mean they convert feed into growth as quickly as possible.

The best chickens that I have eaten were young roosters that had not been fattened. When I plucked them I thought that we were in for a tough chew, but because they were only 6 months or so, they were tender and tasty. I suspect that if you try to fatten your roosters they will make lots more fat, but not much more muscle. So try one without fattening.
Please include where you live, approximately, so we can get a better idea of your climatic conditions

Actually with most males of any species-unless they are castrated, they tend to put on more muscle than fat. The terminology, fattening, is probably a little wrong.
As LR says, the younger the better in regards tenderness, re my comments to get them to acceptable weight as soon as possible!

The protein will tend to add muscle mass before fat if they are underweight for their age. Fat is only laid down once the skeleton and muscle is adequate and then the excess protein and fat in the diet are converted into fat to be stored for future use!