2024 Meat Birds - 5 Weeks Old

It's already Wednesday weigh-in for the meat birds.  The week has been mostly uneventful for the Cornish Cross birds.  They are steadily growing.  You can't really call them chicks any longer.  We had more than a 2 1/2 inch rain this past week, but it didn't phase them.  As young chicks, when they get wet, you can easily lose the whole flock.  Ask me how I know that little factoid.  They are older now and have feathers and put off a lot of heat.  

Speaking of heat, I still have them under the heat lamps at night.  During the day, I turn them off as it has been warming up into the upper 80's already.  I'm still feeding them bugs at night.  As far as feeding, we're still giving them an 18% protein, non-medicated chick grower.  I feed at breakfast, lunch and supper.  In other words, I keep feed in front of them all day long.  At nightfall,, I pull the feed and give them a 12 hour stretch with no feed.  In the morning, they are hungry.  They practically attack me when I open the door with the bucket of feed.

Let the sleeping chickens lie

I picked up a bird of average stature for the weigh-in.  Remember, there are 7 birds that are a week older.  I'm not weighing any of those guys.  You can see by this one's comb that he is a rooster.

This bird has some big feet!  I noticed them when I set him down on the scale.  Let's see what he weighs...

Exactly 4 pounds.

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces
• Week 4, they weighed 44 ounces
• Week 5, they weighed 64 ounces

That's a weight gain of 20 ounces or 1 pound 4 ounces over the last week.  At exactly four pounds, that is precisely where we want to be at this point.  At this rate, we are on course for butchering at the 8 week point.  We'll check back in next Wednesday.