2016 Meat Birds at 1 Week Old

It's weigh-in time.   It's week one for the meat birds and each week we put them up on the scale to see how they've grown.  We're shooting for a 6 pound bird because those dress out at the perfect size for us - 4 1/2 pounds.  For Cornish Cross birds that takes 8-10 weeks and for the Red Rangers, 10-12 weeks.  So first up and the weekly weight watcher's scale is the Cornish Cross.  This dude is visibly bigger than last week, that's for sure.  After the first day we put them on 28% Protein Game Bird Feed.

Cornish X

And he weighs in at 8 ounces at 1 week.  Last he at 2 days old, he was 3 ounces. He's almost tripled his weight.

8 ounces @ 1 week old

Here is the Red Ranger.  You can tell he's grown, but he's still smaller than the Cornish Cross.

Red Ranger

He weighs 6 ounces, while last week he weighed only 2 ounces.  Wow.  This guy has tripled his weight in a week.

8 ounces at 1 week

One other notable thing is that while they still have some 'down,' their wing feathers are starting to come in.  They are eating a lot and drinking a lot of water.  We've replaced the 2 quart-sized watering containers with 2 gallon-sized watering containers.

Most of the chicks are healthy and happy.  We did have something going on in the brooder (Pasty Butt) for a few days. and ended up losing 7 birds.  That's not good. We think we have it under control now, but that was quite an unfortunate thing to happen.  

Our fine, feathered friend

After a week of the chicks being on the high protein feed, we'll ratchet down the protein percent to an 18% ration.  Next week we will take another peek at how they are doing.