2018 Meat Birds - Six Weeks Old

Very early Saturday morning, we had some bad weather accompanied by strong winds blow through.  We were prepared, though.  The night before I had used a sledge hammer to drive a metal stake into the ground and tied a rope around the stake and the frame of the chicken tractor.  This (hopefully) would hold the tractor down.  We had learned a couple of years ago that the tarp on the tractor turns it into a sail and in high winds, it will flip it over and kill chickens.

After Saturday morning's weather, I learned that I need to stake down BOTH sides!

Staking it down

The winds picked up the tractor and shifted it, breaking one of the wheel levers in the process and setting the tractor down on a water bucket.  Fortunately, none of the chickens were injured or killed and only four of them were outside the tractor.  They were quickly caught and returned to safety.

A broken wheel lever that must be repaired

I simply used the old wheel lever as a template and cut another one out of a 2x6 and then drilled holes in it and put it all together.  It isn't as pretty as the first one, but it works!  I was able to move the tractor to a dry spot.

All Fixed up!

So it is 'weigh day,' and as I discussed last week, I normally pick out an average sized bird to weigh.  I'll do that today as well, but I'll also pick out the largest bird and weigh it.  I'll pick out the smallest bird and weigh it, and I'll also pick out an average-sized bird and weigh it.  We're shooting for a 6 pound carcass at 8 weeks, so let's see where we are at 6 weeks.  Here is the biggest bird.  He's an athletic thing and promptly jumped out of my bucket!

I put him back in the bucket and carried him into the garage where I have the kitchen scale set up.

The largest bird weighed in at.... (drum roll) 5 pounds 13 ounces!  Whoa.  He'll be ready to butcher at some point during his 7th week of life.  A week early!

Let's see the smallest bird.  He is easy to spot.  He's not agile enough to jump from the bucket, but he didn't like being in it for sure. 

The smallest bird at six weeks weighed 4 pounds 7 ounces.  There's almost a pound and a half difference in weight between the largest bird and the smallest.

Now, let's do like we've been doing every other week and we'll weigh the bird that looks to be the average-sized bird.  I scooped him up and put him in the bucket.

The average-sized bird weighed 5 pounds 4 ounces.



Let's look at a good comparison:

Week Six 2018: 5 pounds 4 ounces.  That is one pound six ounce gain since last week!
Week Six 2017: 4 pounds 8 ounces.
Week Six 2016: 5 pounds 1 ounce

We are well ahead of 2017 birds at this stage and slightly ahead of 2016.  These birds are just healthy and looking good.  We don't want them to get too much over six pounds as we've discovered the tenderness and flavor of the bird suffers.  We may very well try to butcher them in batches.  In other words, we may try to slaughter them as they reach 6 pounds and allow the smaller birds to grow for another week.  We'll see if that makes sense.  Stay tuned for next week's weigh-in, as it could be the last for the 2018 Meat Birds.