2017 Meat Birds - 3 Weeks Old

This evening Tricia cooked up some fried rice with a couple of fresh eggs and then stir-fried some chicken with snow peas, carrots and water chestnuts.  I haven't tried to grow water chestnuts, but everything other than the rice came from the pasture or the garden.  But let's REWIND things a bit.

That chicken in the recipe tonight at one time were not in the pot, but in our brooder... like these birds.  They look to me like they've grown, but we will confirm that in a moment.  They are filling up the brooder.  They are also filling up our garage with a strong stench of chicken poop.  Soon we'll move them out to the pasture.

Before I even put them up on the scale, I know they have increased in size.  I rescued the bird below who had gotten greedy and his head was stuck in the feeder. Tomorrow, I will remove the lids off of the feeder.  There are pros and cons to doing that.  On the plus side, the birds won't get their heads stuck anymore.  On the negative side, the clean feed you see in the feeders won't be so clean anymore.  The lid keeps the birds from sitting in the feeder and pooping in it.  They certainly don't have good table manners.

Last week I mentioned that I would find a way to mark the birds so that I would be able to quickly pick out the bird we are weighing each week, and ensure that we are weighing the same exact bird.  Initially, I was thinking about just spray painting a dot on one of their heads.  Then Tricia encouraged me not to as the paint might be toxic to the bird (as well as us) when we ate him.

Plan B: I found a maroon ribbon in Tricia's craft box and tied the ribbon around the bird's neck.  I'll pick him out each week from here on out.  As he grows, I'll have to cut the ribbon off and put a new one on so he doesn't get choked.  You can see the ol' boy with his bowtie standing on top of the scale.  When I picked him up, he was markedly heavy - and warm.  I turned off the heat lamps as I think they are generating enough body heat to keep each other from being cold.

Let's take a look at the scale...

Here are the results from Week 3 :
*Week 3 2017:  1 pound 9 ounces
*Week 3 2016:  1 pound 15 ounces
*Week 3 2015:    14 ounces

So to summarize, last week they weighed on average 13 ounces and this week 1 pound 9 ounces. That means they gained 12 ounces over the last week.  They are still 6 ounces shy of where they were at this age last year, but 11 ounces heavier than what the 2015 birds weighed at this age.  Next week they'll likely be out of the garage (Yes!) and out on grass in the pasture.