Okay, we're one week past the point at which we should have butchered these birds. The normal time frame for a Cornish Cross to reach maturity is 8 weeks. Tonight we're at 9 weeks. This old boy must feel like a convict who's on death row and has received a stay from his execution. I picked him up from the chicken tractor, placed him in a blue plastic bucket, and carried him to the garage where we have the kitchen scale out on my workbench. Then I put him on the garage floor, put the bucket on the scale and zeroed out the scale.
 |
| Weigh in time |
He has grown and is filling the bucket. If you compared him to the other 93 birds in the tractor, I would say he is on the larger side.
 |
| Cornish Cross Meat Bird |
He felt noticeably larger than last week when I picked him up. Let's see what the scale says.
 |
| Tipping the scale at... |
Well, this week he weighs 5 pounds 6 ounces. Last week he weighed 4 pounds 2 ounces. He's gained 1 pound and a 1/4 in a week! That's good.
 |
| Getting close to our goal of 6 pounds |
So that settles it for me. We have been shooting for a 6 pound bird that will yield a 4.5 pound carcass on average. For this bird, at least, we'll reach that goal and we will set next weekend, March 15th, as the butcher date. We'll weigh in one final time next Friday night and then butcher them on Saturday. I'll start setting up the equipment this week for 'boucherie poulets" next weekend. We'll show you step by step how we do it in several blog posts shortly thereafter. We'll be a couple weeks past the optimal butcher date, but better late than never.
No comments:
Post a Comment