Three weeks are in the books for the meat birds. I'm not a superstitious person, so I'll go ahead and say it: We haven't lost a single bird. We started with 32 and 32 are still upright and vertical. That's good. Real good. We've been feeding them an 18% protein Chick Starter with no medication or antibiotics. We keep the feeders full, but the feeders you see in the photo below will be swapped out with a PVC gutter that we use as a feed trough in order to fix a problem. I noticed today that the chicks' heads were getting stuck in the feeder. They're growing.
The other thing that's different is that I replaced the one gallon waterer with our old trusty bell chicken waterer.
It suspends from the roof of the tractor and has a 5 gallon reservoir that I'll show in the next photo.
The reservoir is simply a 5 gallon bucket with a 5/16 hole drilled in it. A rubber tube connects to a valve on the bell waterer. The five gallon bucket sits precariously atop another 5 gallon bucket turned upside down that sits on a cow molasses tub turned upside down. This set up allows gravity to do its thing and provides sufficient head pressure to keep water flowing as the chicks drink it. We're still adding apple cider vinegar to the water.
So today is weigh day. I snatched up an average bird. Not the biggest. Not the smallest. I carry him in to the kitchen scale I have set up in the garage. He's a nice looking bird. He feels plump. I'm still feeding them a whole bunch of june bugs every night. That's free protein you don't have to pay for at the feed store and the chicks love 'em. I set this week's bird down and he gave me a nice profile pic.
I sat him down on the scale for the Wednesday weekly weigh-in...
This week, Week 3, he weighed 1 lb. 13 oz or 29 ounces
- Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
- Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
- Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces
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