2014 Meat Birds at 10 Weeks old

Today marked the 10 week mark since we got our Cornish Cross Meat birds. We've been waiting for them to get to the 6 pound mark since that will yield a 4 1/2 pound carcass.  Last week we made the decision that we were going to cut our losses.  One more week of feed and that's it.  We're butchering at 10 weeks regardless of how much they weigh.  Plus - we're tired.  10 weeks of pushing the chicken tractor every day, carrying water and feed to them and then babying them through cold and inclement weather will put more than a little wear and tear on you.

We gave them their last meal at noon today and we'll butcher them tomorrow morning starting at around 8 am.  We stopped feeding them so that their intestinal tract will be empty.  This makes them cleaner when you gut them.  We also move them off of the grass the night before since they eat grass. We want to make sure their crops are empty as well.  We have a makeshift cage set up on our concrete driveway so they can't eat grass.  (We'll have to spray the mess off the driveway tomorrow.) So we put the 150 gallon water trough on the hay forks on the back of the tractor, drove out to the chicken tractor and made 3 loads of around 30 - 32 birds.  We ended up with 92 birds, losing 9 birds total as we started with 101.

The chicken moving tractor

Here's a picture of approximately 32 birds in the trough, packed in there like sardines.

Going for a ride

And here they are in their final evening, sleeping on concrete.  We moved Big Boy out of the pasture to stand guard over them as it would be horrible to lose them to predators the night before butchering.

Birds on a slab

So for the final weigh in, the suspense was high.  How much was he going to weigh? I zeroed out the scale, put him in a 5 gallon bucket so he wouldn't jump out, and put him on the scale.

What do you think she weighed?

As the chicken peered over the bucket I looked at the scale... 

What's the final weight??

6 pounds, two ounces!  We reached our goal!!

6 pounds and two ounces

Everyone didn't meet the weight gain goal, though.  Look at the runt of the litter. We've never had this happen before.  Oh, some will be smaller than the others. Generally the hens are smaller than the roosters, but this little fella was stunted and never gained weight.  I don't know how this happens.  They have 32 feet total length of total of feed troughs, so it's not like he couldn't get to the food.  He could.  In fact I'd see him IN the feed trough.  He just never grew.

The Giant and the Dwarf

I was curious to see how much she weighed so I put her on the scale...

Just a hair shy of 2 pounds

We'll still butcher her as well.  She's about the size of the Cornish hens that you see. Someone will be able to eat her whole.  Well, we'll butcher tomorrow.  Over the next week we'll show the butchering process and then we'll tally up the costs, the weight and report final numbers.  I think in total our birds are smaller this year on average, but we'll have to wait and see.  Our mortality rate was way down this year and that's a good thing.

Good night, everyone.  Tomorrow is the execution date and there will be no stay of execution, I can promise you that.