The 2015 Meat Birds - Five Weeks Old

Five weeks old.  I brought them to the scale for the weigh in in the blue bucket that I carry their feed out to them in.  The birds are growing.  Next time I'll likely need 2 buckets.  The Cornish Cross can crane his neck over the edge of the bucket.  He tried to fly out as I was crossing over the fence and I had to push him back down into the bucket.

The Red Ranger looks to be about half his size, but that is par for the course.  The Cornish Cross is supposed to mature at around 8-10 weeks and the Red Ranger around 12 weeks.

I took them both out of the bucket so that you could see the size disparity between the two.

Well, let's get them on the scale.  First up the Red Ranger.  A grocery store sales circular was used to line the top of the scale in the event that the bird pooped.  

Zooming in on the scale, you can see that the Red Ranger weighs 1 pound 2 ounces today.  Last week he was 12 ounces, so he gained 6 ounces over the past week.

1 pound 2 ounces

Now it's the Cornish Cross' turn.  When I placed him on top he started squawking.  

Looking at the scale closely, we see that this old boy weighs in at 2 pounds 4 ounces today.  Last week he weighed 1 pound 4 ounces.  He gained a pound.  He's not having any problem finding the supper table, is he?

2 pounds 4 ounces

Speaking of the supper table, I wanted to show you their supper tables.  This week I actually slid an additional trough in.  They are growing and all of them were having difficulty reaching the food with only one.  The trough on the right is made with a corner piece of a metal barn and the trough on the left is actually a pvc rain gutter. 

The birds will hop up in the troughs and eat while sitting on top of the food.  They aren't much on manners.

We'll check in on their growth in another week.  If I had to guess right now based on current weights, I'd say that we'll be butchering the Cornish Cross birds at the 10 week time frame.  I don't have enough experience with the Red Rangers to venture a guess.  We haven't lost any birds this week and they seem to be active and growing nicely.