2021 Meat Birds - Week Six

We are in week six of the Cornish Cross Meat Bird Project.  In checking our inventory of frozen birds in the deep freeze, we will be right on time.  We only have two chickens in the freezer.  With 50 birds approaching butchering, we will fill the freezer back up, and it is right on time.  It is 'gumbo season!'  With the winter chill setting in (or as much winter as we get in South Louisiana), nothing hits the spot like a big bowl of Chicken and Sausage gumbo.

These are real chickens.  I noticed this week that Kentucky Fried Chicken began selling a product they call "Beyond Chicken."  They are nuggets made of soy and wheat protein fried in oil.  This is America and people are free to eat what they want.  We'll eat vegetables from our garden and real chicken and real beef from our pasture, not vegetables pretending to be meat!  But to each his own.

Tonight it will be in the upper twenties (b-r-r-r-r-r-r!) and the north wind is steadily blowing at 18 mph.  It is very cold.  We have a fire burning in the fireplace and I've staked down the chicken tractor so that the winds don't blow it over.  The chickens are huddled up under the heat lamps and the tarp breaks some of the wind, but those birds are cold.  We still haven't lost but one.  It would be nice to get all 50 to the eight week period.  We shall see.  It will be in the twenties for the next three nights.

As is our custom, Thursday afternoon is 'weigh day.'  I walk out to the tractor and pick out the first bird I can put my hands on.  The bird tonight is a rooster, so he's a little bigger, but most of the birds are within a half pound of each other, I would assume.  He feels heavy, solid, and healthy.  We are still feeding them 3 times a day and still feeding them an 18% protein ration.  Some people really pour the feed to them and give a higher protein percentage ration, but we are only trying to get them to about 6 pounds and aren't interested in rushing it.  These birds will overeat and can get so heavy that their skeletons cannot support the weight, resulting in leg issues.  We'll just go slow and steady to avoid that.

Let's see what the scale says.  On Week Six, the bird weighed 4 pounds 15 ounces.  That's some nice, sustained growth.  I'll bring this fellow back to his flock.  They were all sort of piled up in the tractor, trying to stay warm.  Hopefully they won't suffocate one another.  We've had that happen before when they piled up.

The weight of the bird I picked out this week to weigh was 4 pounds 15 ounces. Last week the weight was 3 pounds 7 ounces, so they have gained a pound and 8 ounces this past week. This is how we compare with previous years at this time period:

Week Six 2019: 4 pounds 5 ounces.
Week Six 2018: 5 pounds 4 ounces.
Week Six 2017: 4 pounds 8 ounces.
Week Six 2016: 5 pounds 1 ounce.

The birds are right where we need them to be and are on schedule for butchering in two weeks.  Tune in next week for the second to last weigh in.