2017 Meat Birds - 1 Week Old

The Cornish Cross Meat birds in our garage are a week old.  Actually they are probably a week and three days old, but I'm not splitting hairs.  They are in a brooder and are being warmed under two heat lamps.  The have two - 1 gallon water containers along with 5 feed troughs.  They eat an enormous amount of feed and already the garage smells real bad.  The birds have atrocious table manners as they sit in the feed trough and poop in it while they are eating.

The birds haven't been stressed, but we have had some fatalities.  3 Cornish Cross chicks have died. I'm not really sure about the cause of death.  None of the Rhode Island Reds (RIRs) have died, although they have had an ailment that I am currently treating.  Perhaps I'll talk about that in tomorrow's post.

In this weekly installment we'll track the weight gain of the chicks over the 8 to 10 week period and discuss their lives, challenges and other interesting tidbits about them.  If you look closely, you can notice that there is beginning to be some feather development on the wings.  A week ago they were little fuzz balls.  Now they are putting on feathers.

I put a newspaper over the kitchen scale for obvious reasons, zero out the scale, and put the ol' boy up on the scale for weigh-in time.

Last week he weighed 1 1/2 ounces
This week he weighs 7 1/2 ounces
Last years' birds at one week old weighed 8 ounces.

It looks like we are right on track