2016 Meat Birds at 3 Weeks Old

It's week 3 in the lives of the meat birds.  As we talked about yesterday, we moved them out of the brooder and out onto the pasture.  I walked out and hopped into the tractor and pulled out a Cornish Cross and a Red Ranger and put them in a bucket to bring them into the garage where I had the scale set up on my workbench with a rag on top to protect against chicken poop.

Cornish Cross @ 3 weeks old

Actually I didn't just pick any bird, I picked the ones we marked to follow by placing a zip tie around their legs.  Last year I tried to mark the ones I'd weigh each week by putting a dot of water based paint on top of them, but the paint wore off.  The zip ties work better.  I'll just have to watch closely that they don't grow too much, causing the zip tie to get too tight around their feet.

Marking the birds to weigh each week

And time for the weekly results!  This week the Cornish Cross weighed almost 2 pounds.

1 lb 15 ounces

Here's a little comparison I worked up that compares this week with last week and with our birds last year at three weeks old:

As the table shows, our Cornish Cross gained 13 ounces over the past week, and they weigh 1 lb and 1 ounce more than the birds did from the same time last year.  That's some significant growth. Remember, we're aiming for a 6 pound bird on butchering day.

Now let's look at the Red Rangers.  They run around more and act more like a normal chicken would, whereas the Cornish Cross mainly sits, eats, and poops.  The Red Ranger is a taller, leaner bird as you can see.

Red Ranger at 3 Weeks old

And here you can see that at 3 weeks old the Red Ranger weighs almost a pound.  15 ounces, to be precise.

15 ounces

Here's the same table with the same comparative metrics, but for the Red Ranger:

The Red Ranger gained 7 ounces over the past week and weighs 6 ounces more than the birds from last year at 3 weeks old.

I've taken them off of the Game Bird feed and they are now completely eating Chick Grower (18% protein).  Well, that's not totally factual.  They eat grass now that they are on pasture and they also eat something else that they are absolutely crazy about that is unusual.  I think I'll talk about that tomorrow.