Well, we are at the end of the road for the meat birds. Today marks eight weeks. We got them delivered when they were one day old baby chicks. In eight short weeks, they have grown into monsters. I have sores on my hands from them pecking me when I feed them each day. They are ravenous and fly around when I bring feed, pecking at my hands and scratching my legs with their claws.
The goal, as I've communicated, is to have a 6 pound bird on butcher day as that yields a 4 pound carcass. We have 50 birds that we'll be butchering. We've only lost one bird over the eight week period. We will butcher on Saturday and will show you the process we use. We've perfected it over the years. We still have lots to learn and try to improve the process each year.
As you can see below, the birds have grown such that they've filled the tractor.
On this final 'weigh day,' I wanted to look at it a little differently. In previous weeks, we've grabbed a bird and weighed it to get a good idea of growth rates. Last week the bird we weighed was 4 pounds 15 ounces. This week I picked out the biggest bird and the smallest bird to see where we are.
Here is the biggest:
He weighs 6 pounds 6 ounces. He is a nice specimen! He'll exceed our target weight when we butcher on Saturday (day after tomorrow).
Let's look at the smallest bird. He is an anomaly. There are no other birds as small as he is. The runt of the litter, I guess.
And he weighs 4 pounds 10 ounces. He misses our target weight by quite a lot, but I'm thinking our average weight by bird will exceed 6 pounds and pull our overall average up. We shall see.
In the meantime before Saturday, we will be sharpening knives, purchasing zip loc bags and setting up the killing cones, scalder, plucker, eviscerating tables and tubs of water so we can get a good start on Saturday. It's supposed to be cold (in the upper 20's!). We may not need to buy ice!
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