Moving Day For the Meat Birds

There are a few predominant factors that guide me in determining when to move the meat birds out of the garage and out on grass.  The first is the age of the birds. I usually try to move them out around the 3 to 4 week old point. The weather plays an important role.  I'm not going to move them out if rainstorms and cold weather are in the forecast.  Finally, the smell or better yet, stench of the birds.

There comes a distinct time at which it doesn't matter how often you clean out and replace the bedding in the brooder, the fowl fouls it up with the quickness.  It is a sickening smell that permeates the garage and when you open the back door, the odor wafts into the house.  Flies become ever present in the garage and they make their way into the house when the door is opened.

Sunday afternoon of this week, I raised the white flag of surrender and transported the birds out of the garage.  Fortunately, the Gorilla Cart wagon was a great help in performing this task and we had the birds moved in 4 trips.

The meat wagon

They were deposited in our newly built chicken tractor out on grass.  Fresh clover was growing, the sun was shining, and it was a good day to be a meat bird. Freedom from the confines of the indoor brooder, more elbow room and fresh grass to eat.  Once they were moved, I cleaned out the soiled bedding from the brooder and moved it to the compost pile in the garden.

It was a little chilly and the birds bunched up a bit to signal that they were cold.  To remedy this I put a tarp over the chicken tractor to act as a windbreak.  I also hung two heat lamps from the 1x4 that spanned the top of the tractor.  The birds were happy after that.  I added an additional waterer, bringing the water capacity within the tractor to 3 gallons.  Those birds sure drink a lot of water.  As far as food, they eat a lot of that, too.  I originally placed a pvc rain gutter in the tractor and two days later placed another one.  A pvc rain gutter is the cheapest and best feed trough you can imagine.  You get the biggest bang for your buck using a pvc rain gutter as a feed trough rather than a store-bought one.

Now each day, I pull the tractor one tractor length so the chickens are on fresh grass each day.  I learned a lesson the hard way that I need to slow down and get Benjamin to come assist when pulling the tractor.  I pulled it too fast Monday afternoon and the birds bunched up and one of the birds died.  A second was stressed and I revived it.  The first bird, however, was beyond saving, so I got my knife and butchered it.  It was exactly the size of a Cornish hen.  That bird now resides in our deep freeze.  In total we've only lost 4 birds.  That isn't bad at all, considering the fatality rates of previous years.

Well, that's enough for chickens.  Next week I plan on blogging about anything else but chickens.