2019 Meat Birds - Seven Weeks Old

Thursday night.  The routine continues.  I get home from work and fill a bucket with 6 scoops of Chick Grower 18% Protein crumbles.  I walk to the chicken tractor, put the wheels down and slowly push the tractor to fresh grass.  They scurry to the fresh grass and begin pecking at clover.  Being in the same spot all day, they've made a real mess on the ground.  They eat a lot and they poop a lot.

I fill the two gutters with feed and the chickens go CRAZY!  They peck at your legs and your arms... Tricia has little peck marks on her arm where they have pecked at her.  Imagine what has happened in the last seven weeks.  They have grown from little cute, yellow puff balls that weighed an ounce or so into grown up, mean, "monster-birds."

We'll find out in a minute how much they weigh.  I pick out three averaged sized ones.  Now that they are older, I pick out two roosters (since they are larger) and a hen (since they are smaller) to weigh.

We put the first chicken on the scale.  Appropriately, you can see the Lone Star feed behind him.  Those boogers are eating a lot of that stuff.

Holy Moly!  5 pounds 15 ounces!

And now we'll put the hen on the scale...

Bird 1: 5 pounds 10 ounces (rooster)
Bird 2: 5 pounds 15 ounces (rooster)
Bird 3: 5 pounds 2 ounces   (hen)

Drum roll please... 

At the end of seven weeks, the birds weight 5 pounds 9 ounces!  That shows a gain of 1 pound and 4 ounces over last week.  To look at previous years at this same time:

*Week 7 2018: 5 pounds 15 ounces
*Week 7 2017:  4 pounds 1 ounce 
*Week 7 2016:  5 pounds 14 ounces 
*Week 7 2015:  3 pounds 9 ounces

Our goal is a 6 pound bird at the end of 8 weeks.  We were running behind in comparison to previous years, but this last week, we made up a lot of ground.  The birds should be ready by next weekend.  It'll be butchering day next Saturday.