2018 Meat Birds - 1 Week Old

We're one week into this year's edition of the on-going experiment of growing our own poultry.  We learn something new each year.  Sometimes when we try to incorporate things learned, we solve old problems and new ones crop up.  Here's a brief narrative of what has transpired in the last week:

The fowl (err... foul) smell emanating from the brooder lets you immediately know that the little boogers are eating a lot.  We add fresh shavings to the brooder, but it doesn't take them long to soil the fresh shavings.  The portion of cattle panel over the top of the brooder is a semi-protective measure that we added to help dissuade our cats from eating our birds.  In the first two days we lost 8 birds and then one more on the third day to bring the death count (so far) to 9.  Not good!

Since last week, we've added a gallon sized waterer in addition to a smaller one and a second feed trough.  I would think that we'll be adding a third trough and perhaps a second waterer as the chicks need for feed (and water) increases.  Although not captured in the photo below, we've expanded the size of the brooder.  Maybe I'll illustrate how we did this later this week.

I randomly selected an averaged sized chick and put him on our kitchen scale.  First, a sat a scrap piece of paper on the scale to protect it from poop.  The chick is at an awkward stage of growth with his cute fuzz being replaced with tiny feathers.

He weighs in at one week old at 7 ounces.
2017 birds at one week old weighed 7 1/2 ounces.
2016 birds at one week old weighed 8 ounces.

Although the weight is a little off over previous years, I'm not going to worry about it.  We have some time to make that weight up - about 8 weeks, to be exact.  Oh, I wanted to show you the baby feathers I spoke of earlier:

Here they are, the first white feathers growing out on the wing tips.  We will post again next week and compare notes on growth and the life and times of a meat bird.