The 2015 Meat Birds - Seven Weeks Old

The birds are getting bigger and the chicken tractor that measures 12 ft by 6 ft is now too tight a fit for all the birds, so I enlarged it by pulling off one of the sheets of tin and affixing a couple of hog panels.  This gives the birds an additional 16 feet of grass to forage on,  I use two pvc gutters as feed troughs for them and sit a container of water in the extension.

It doesn't take the birds long to soil the grass underneath them.  Each day I push the tractor over fresh grass.  You've really got to be careful when pushing.  The birds aren't smart at all and they have a tendency to get right in front of the wheels. Unfortunately, I ran over one of the birds to day and it killed him.  I'll be more careful next time and will bump the tractor for a foot or so and then check to see if all the birds are okay before pushing.

Extension for the chicken tractor

At night I round up the birds that are still outside, get them all into the tractor, and put the sheet of tin back on the tractor to close it off.  We have owls around here and I don't want to tempt them with some fat birds lounging outside.

All birds back in the tractor for the night

I walked out at night and picked up one Cornish Cross and on Red Ranger for the weekly weigh-in. In the past I tried to pick the same birds each time, but my marker on them wore off, so for now, I'm just picking an average-size bird to weigh each week.

We're weighing the Red Ranger first.  He was very calm on the scale.  Of course I put a plastic bag over the scale to keep things sanitary.  These birds would like nothing more than to mess on our kitchen scale.  We can't have that!

Last week he weighed 1 pound 5 ounces.  This week he weighed 1 pound 13 ounces. That's a gain of 8 ounces.

1/2 pound weight gain for the week

Next it was time for the Cornish Cross to be weighed.

Cornish Cross on the scale

Last week he weighed 2 pounds 9 ounces.  This week he weighs in at 3 pounds, 9 ounces.  He gained a pound this week.  Not bad!

3 pounds 9 ounces

We feed them first thing in the morning, again at noon, and again in the evening.  We might give them slightly more feed to meet needs.  The positive thing is that they are both growing.