2014 Meat Birds

On Friday, January 3rd, Tricia, Russ, and Benjamin went to pick up our 2014 batch of Cornish Cross Meat Birds.  We generally get a shipment of birds that are received at a day old and we raise them for 8 - 10 weeks at which time they are ready to butcher. We freeze them and eat on them all year long.  We know that they had no medicines, no antibiotics or hormones.  We know that they were treated humanely and were on pasture on green grass and under blue skies.

Since we took delivery of 100 baby chicks, I took the tin roof off of a small chicken coop that was given to me and refashioned it with heat lamps so serve as a brooder for 50 of the birds, with 25 on the left side of the divider and 25 on the right.  In anticipation of the chicks arriving, Russ made it nice and cozy for them by layering the bottom with fresh hay (which they will foul up, pardon the pun, in no time).

Newly remodeled brooder

The brooder shown below is the old brooder from years past that Russ, Benjamin, and I renovated a little bit.  I actually put hooks on the four corners of both brooders and intended to hang them from the rafters in the hen house.  For the past several years, we keep the chicks in the brooders in the garage for a couple of weeks until they are old enough to go out into the chicken tractors in the pasture, but the stench of poop from 100 birds is over-powering.  Moving them to the hen house would be GREAT! Wouldn't you know it, though, in the next 3 days, we're going to be getting weather with lows in the 20's.  That is cold for us and baby chicks don't do well in the cold. Until the weather stabilizes, they'll live in our garage unfortunately.

Older brooder

As soon as the chicks come in, the boys dip their little beaks into the water to make sure they are hydrated.

As they give the thirsty chicks some water, they count them.  There were exactly 100 and they were very healthy acting.

Thirsty birds

Once watered and counted, the boys put them into the brooders.  The heat lamps are situated about 18 inches above them and give them a nice, warm, and cozy home.

Home sweet Home

The chicks will gravitate toward the light.  The boys also put some pans out with 18% Non-medicated chick grower crumbles out.  It is neat to watch the little day old birds begin to eat and instinctively scratch with their little feet.

Positioning the heat lamp is an exercise in trial and error.  If the lamp is too low, the chicks will scatter to get away from the heat.  If the lamp in not low enough, the chicks will bunch up together to stay warm, running the risk that they will crush and suffocate one another.  Soon we had it positioned just right.

Staying nice and warm

Benjamin is holding one of the little chicks.  They are so very cute at this age - just a little yellow fluff ball.  It doesn't take very long, though, for these little fellas to get ugly looking.

Awww!  Look how cute!

Here is my main man, Benjamin, holding a baby chick.

Check out my Chick

I'll try to post an update each week like I did last year so that you can see the progress of their growth over their lifespan.  It really is amazing how these little guys grow. We'll also keep track of our costs and at the end we'll report on the cost per bird and cost per pound.