2020 Meat Birds - By the Numbers

I promised to finish up on our segment of butchering our meat birds by giving a little recap of our costs and other figures we always track every year.

Ordered      50
Received    50
Mortality     3  (6% mortality rate)
Butchered  47

Date Mailed                3/23/2020
Date of Slaughter       5/16/2020
Days old @ slaughter             56
Weeks old @ slaughter            8

For comparative purposes, our Total Costs last year on 47 birds were $443.24, yielding a cost per bird of $9.43.  Much better this year!  Last year we fed 16 bags of feed.  This year we fed only 14.5.  Much better conversion of feed to meat as last year each bird consumed 17 pounds of feed and this year each bird consumed only 15.4 pounds of feed.

2020
Total pounds Cornish Cross Carcass whole            230.40 lbs.
Average pounds per bird                                              4.9  lbs.
Cost per pound                                                           $1.60

For comparative purposes, here are the numbers from 2019:
Total pounds Cornish Cross Carcass whole            193.10 lbs.
Average pounds per bird                                              4.11  lbs.
Cost per pound                                                           $2.30

On the same # of birds (47), we produced 37.3 pounds more of meat in 2020 over 2019.  Our cost per pound was $0.70 per pound cheaper in 2020 over 2019.

Overall one of our best years and I attribute it to two things:
#1   Purchasing the birds later in the year.  (2019 we got them on 2/28.  2020 on 3/23)  Getting them later meant that the birds were warmer.  Their calories were not expended keeping warm, but in growing.
#2   We put them on grass from day 1.  They were able to scratch and do "chicken things" like eat grass, bugs, and worms to supplement the feed we kept in front of them.