2016 Meat Birds at Eleven Weeks Old

So tick tock, tick tock...  Time for the Red Rangers keeps on ticking.  The Cornish Cross Meat Birds are all frozen solid in our freezer.  Red Rangers take up to four weeks longer to mature.  They are eleven weeks old now and time for our weekly weigh-in.  I carried our Red Ranger Rooster by the feet to the garage where I have the kitchen scale set up.

It is warming up here in mid-May and I could feel the heat of the bird as I carried him.  He flapped his wings and settled down as I set him on my messy workbench strewn with tools.

Week 11 Weigh in

As you know the goal is 6 pounds.   Let's put 'Ol Boy on the scale and see the results of another week of food, grass, and growth...

Biggest Loser?  Hope not...

This week, 'Ol Red tipped the scale at 4 pounds and 13 ounces.

Four Pounds and 13 ounces

The days are getting longer and when I put the red ranger back in the chicken tractors with all of his compadres, it looks like their living conditions are quite good.  Sunshine is streaming in, green grass beneath their feet, a raingutter with chick grower in it and a waterer with plenty of fresh, clean water to drink.  Happy, healthy birds, to be sure.

Red Rangers in the Chicken Tractor

So here is our comparison table so we can track the growth from week to week as the butcher date approaches.  We can see that the Red Ranger gained one half pound over the last week.

So, we can say with pretty good confidence that we'll be butchering in two weeks, three weeks at the latest.  I was discussing with Tricia that it is going to be hot butchering in a couple (or three) weeks and the flies will be out in full force, necessitating a fan.  Although it is fun to raise your own food, it involves time each day feeding them, watering them and pushing the chicken tractor to fresh grass.  It will be a welcome break to not have to do that everyday!

2016 Meat Birds at 7 Weeks Old

Here we are at seven weeks since birth of our meat birds.  It seems like a long time ago since we got the telephone call from the post office telling us to go pick up a box full of chirping day-old chicks, but really it wasn't that long ago.  There's a lot of work that goes into growing these birds.  Each day we walk out to the chicken tractor and push it one length to fresh grass.  We feed them three times a day and keep them supplied with fresh, clean drinking water.

Remember our goal is a 6 pound bird as experience has taught us that this gross weight yields a 4 1/2 pound carcass - the perfect size in our opinion.  In a perfect situation, the Cornish Cross is ready for butchering at 8 - 10 weeks and the slower growing Red Ranger is ready for processing at 12 - 14 weeks.  Enough with the rambling, let's look at results!

I walked out and opened the doors of the chicken tractor and peered down.  The birds are just beautiful, white, healthy, and large - the best we've ever had.  I attribute this to the stellar weather we've had this year.  You can see that the white (Cornish Cross) birds are larger and more aggressive and get to the feed trough faster than their Red Ranger counterparts.

2016 Meat Birds

I climbed into the tractor and searched for the two chickens with the zip ties around their legs.  I put them in a five gallon bucket to bring them to the scale.  They don't much like being put in a bucket.

A bucket of chicken

I always place them on top of the workbench so that we can see a comparison in their size. Remember they are the same age.  The Red Ranger must have been a little traumatized by being in the same bucket as that big white monster.

Big Fella

So the Cornish Cross goes on top of the scale first.  He is a nice looking bird and stands up tall with great posture.

Big Daddy

This week the Cornish Cross weighs 5 pounds 14 ounces.  He is right at the the six pound goal a week early!  

5 pounds 14 ounces

Let's check in on the Red Ranger.  He's not real big on standing up tonight and just lazily sits on the scale.

I'm gonna sit this one out

The Red Ranger weighs 2 pounds and 10 ounces this week.

Red Ranger - 2 lbs 10 oz.

Let's break this down into details:

The Cornish Cross gained 13 ounces since last week.  At 5 pounds 14 ounces, he's a full two pounds and 5 ounces heavier than the birds at this stage last year.  The Red Ranger gained 7 ounces since last week.  At 2 pounds 10 ounces, he's almost a pound heavier than the birds at this stage last year.

Here's the plan:  Next Saturday we'll butcher all of the Cornish Cross birds.  Then the Red Rangers will have all the food to themselves.  I would assume that we'll butcher them three weeks from next Saturday.  

We'll check in again next week for the Cornish Cross' last weigh in.  Oh, one more thing, as I put the two birds back into the tractor, I noticed that we have selected some good sample birds to weigh as they are average-sized among their peers, with some larger and some smaller.  We won't know the actual average weight until butchering, but we'll compile all the data at that time and report.  

The 2015 Meat Birds - Nine Weeks Old

Time for the weekly weigh in on the meat birds.  This weigh in comes after a 10 day deluge.  The pasture is still water-logged and the birds are still pretty dirty.  The sun was out nice today, so hopefully the ground will dry up and allow the birds to do the same.  All the rain has curtailed their movement and has affected their appetite. They just sat in the wet grass and looked miserable.  That doesn't exactly put the weight on them.

We normally butcher the birds at 10 weeks.  Our birds develop a couple of weeks later because we keep them on 18% Chick Grower for their entire lives.  Some folks start off the first four weeks with a 24-28% ration, but we slow things up a bit due to the Cornish Cross having skeletal problems supporting the quick weight gain.  So this Saturday we'll be butchering the birds.  We had a curve ball tossed at us this year due to some weather and health issues that has affected the birds, so we'll likely do things a bit different and will only butcher the chickens that meet or come close to our 6 pound gross weight goal.  The rest of the birds will be held over and fed until they meet the goal.  Maybe 12 -14 weeks.

So let's see how we're looking a week away from slaughtering.  To reiterate, we're weighing an average sized bird each week.

Chicken in a Bucket

First lets weigh the Cornish Cross.  He's a pretty nice sized bird.  There are a few bigger than him and quite a few smaller.  We put him up on the scale on top of a rag to keep the scale clean.

Cornish Cross Chicken on the scale

The Cornish Cross is tipping the scales at 5 pounds 1 ounce, or just shy of a pound gained since last week.

5 pounds 1 ounce

And now for the Red Ranger's turn on the scale.

The Red Ranger seems like a cleaner bird.  He doesn't get quite as dirty as the Cornish X.  He roams around more.  He is slower to mature though, taking an additional 4 weeks to reach the slaughter weight we're aiming for.  This week the Red Ranger weighs in at 2 pounds 5 ounces.  Whoa!  That's only a 1 ounce weight gain.  That's not good.

2 pounds 5 ounces

Well this is our last weigh in report prior to the slaughter date this coming Saturday, where we'll weigh them and separate the ones we'll keep for butchering from the once we'll "throw back" to continue growing.  

The 2015 Meat Birds - Seven Weeks Old

The birds are getting bigger and the chicken tractor that measures 12 ft by 6 ft is now too tight a fit for all the birds, so I enlarged it by pulling off one of the sheets of tin and affixing a couple of hog panels.  This gives the birds an additional 16 feet of grass to forage on,  I use two pvc gutters as feed troughs for them and sit a container of water in the extension.

It doesn't take the birds long to soil the grass underneath them.  Each day I push the tractor over fresh grass.  You've really got to be careful when pushing.  The birds aren't smart at all and they have a tendency to get right in front of the wheels. Unfortunately, I ran over one of the birds to day and it killed him.  I'll be more careful next time and will bump the tractor for a foot or so and then check to see if all the birds are okay before pushing.

Extension for the chicken tractor

At night I round up the birds that are still outside, get them all into the tractor, and put the sheet of tin back on the tractor to close it off.  We have owls around here and I don't want to tempt them with some fat birds lounging outside.

All birds back in the tractor for the night

I walked out at night and picked up one Cornish Cross and on Red Ranger for the weekly weigh-in. In the past I tried to pick the same birds each time, but my marker on them wore off, so for now, I'm just picking an average-size bird to weigh each week.

We're weighing the Red Ranger first.  He was very calm on the scale.  Of course I put a plastic bag over the scale to keep things sanitary.  These birds would like nothing more than to mess on our kitchen scale.  We can't have that!

Last week he weighed 1 pound 5 ounces.  This week he weighed 1 pound 13 ounces. That's a gain of 8 ounces.

1/2 pound weight gain for the week

Next it was time for the Cornish Cross to be weighed.

Cornish Cross on the scale

Last week he weighed 2 pounds 9 ounces.  This week he weighs in at 3 pounds, 9 ounces.  He gained a pound this week.  Not bad!

3 pounds 9 ounces

We feed them first thing in the morning, again at noon, and again in the evening.  We might give them slightly more feed to meet needs.  The positive thing is that they are both growing.

The 2015 Meat Birds - Four Weeks Old

So here we are at four weeks.  The birds are out of the brooders and out in the chicken tractor on the pasture.  Sort of.  It has been raining every day and the mud is ankle deep.  I have hay piled up in the chicken tractor to keep the chicks out of the rising water.  We only lost one bird this week, so I think we're down to 98 birds. If you recall we started with 117, but 3 arrived dead.

Last night we posted about weighing our cows.  Tonight we'll weigh our chickens. When the birds were in the garage, it was easy to weigh them.  Now I have to walk out to the pasture, climb over the fence, go over the electric fence, grab the Cornish Cross and Red Ranger we've been tracking, put them in the bucket and carry them to the scale.  Just looking in the bucket, you can tell that the Cornish Cross is really growing a lot quicker than the Red Ranger.  Remember the Cornish Cross matures around 8 weeks - the Red Ranger at around 12 weeks.

A bucket of chicken

Experience has taught me to put a rag on top of the scale prior to putting the birds on it.  After zeroing out the scale, the Red Ranger goes on top.

Last week he weighed 9 ounces.  This week we see that he gained three ounces and tips the scale at 12 ounces.

Red Ranger @ 4 weeks - 12 ounces

Here is the Cornish Cross.  Look at those feet!  He is a growing dude.

Cornish Cross

Last week he weighed 14 ounces and this week, he tips the scale at 1 pound, 4 ounces.  He's gained 6 ounces from last week.

Red Ranger @ 4 weeks - 1 pound four ounces

In order to ensure that I'm getting the same birds every week, I got some water based finger paint from our craft cabinet and put a dollop of pink paint on their heads.  Hopefully it will stay and I'll be able to pick them out of all the other birds in the tractor.

Starting tomorrow the weatherman says that things will start drying up.  I'll pitchfork the hay out of the tractor and the birds will finally be able to forage around on the ground for grass and bugs.  I normally like to have them on pasture a week earlier, but our weather just hasn't cooperated.  We'll check in on the pink-headed birds next week and see if they are putting on weight.  The goal we're trying to hit is a 6 pound bird.  We've found that a six pound bird yields a 3 1/2 pound carcass and we really like that size bird.

The 2015 Meat Birds - Two Weeks Old

A week following our last update finds our meat birds growing a little bit.  We put them on the scale and we'll show you the results in a minute, but first, I'll talk a little about the results from this past week.  We ordered these birds a month and a half later than we normally do with the thought process that it would be warmer and the birds would make more efficient use of their calorie intake in growing as opposed to staying warm.  Well...

Here's the part of the narrative where I tell you that chicken ranching is a lot harder than it looks.  I guess if it was easy, everyone would fill their garages with smelly birds and Tyson would go out of business.  The weather was supposed to cooperate, but it didn't.  Several days of near freezing temperatures and a strong north wind affected our birds, even though they were under heat lamps in the garage.  Despite our best efforts, we experienced the agony of defeat.

In last week's installment we had 111 birds.  Alas, we now have 103.  Eight birds succumbed to the cold weather.  When they get cold they bunch up in little piles under the heat lamp and the ones on the bottom are crushed.  I've composted those chicks in the garden and those 8 brave and noble birds will be feeding our garden soil instead of us.  Not a total loss, but there are cheaper ways of feeding your soil. On the bright side, if you are going to lose chicks, you want to lose them now - not after you have put a bunch of feed in them.

A casualty

I picked out our Cornish Cross and Red Ranger that we're monitoring and brought them to the scales for weigh-in.  They are bright and perky and appear to be very healthy.  You can see the wing feathers coming in and the tail feathers on the Cornish Cross.

Cornish Cross (left) and Red Ranger (right)

The Cornish Cross went on the scale first this week and weighed 6 ounces, up 2 ounces from last week.

Cornish Cross - 6 ounces

The Red Ranger stepped on the scale next and weighed 5 ounces, up 2 ounces from last week as well.

Red Ranger - 5 ounces

Here's a shot of the birds in one of our three brooders.  You can see the heat lamp is lowered to a good position and the birds in the center are scattered out - not piled on top of one another.  The birds on the right and top left are eating chick grower (feed).  The birds on the lower left are encircling the waterer and drinking to their heart's content.

In this photo below, if you look to the ground toward the 'brown' color, I don't need to tell you what that is.  Each and every day, we place new bedding on top of the existing 'stuff' and each and every day, they soil it very quickly.

Dirty Birds

I want to try to get these out quickly. but a glance at the 10 day weather forecast is a mess next week, with highs in the early week in the upper 70's followed by high percentage rain chances for 3 days and lows around 34 degrees on Thursday.  We'll see how it goes, perhaps next week at this time, I'll have them out on pasture, but it's not looking good.

The 2015 Meat Birds - One Week Old

Did you ever have a place in your house where your mom would have you line up up with your back against the wall and with a pencil, make a mark on the wall and put the date and how tall you were to track your growth?

In this installment we'll do the same with our chicks, to chart their growth.  This year we'll do something a little different as we'll monitor the growth of the Red Ranger (on left) and the Cornish Cross (on right) in the photo below.  The Red Ranger takes 12 weeks to reach maturity, while the Cornish Cross takes only 8 weeks.  Notice also that the birds are just barely starting to lose their fuzz and put on a few little wing feathers.  They're still cute, but that's about to change.

Red Ranger and Cornish Cross at One Week Old

So we zeroed out the scale after putting a bucket on the scale and then put the Red Ranger in the bucket.  At one week old, he weighed 3 ounces.  They are all eating more and more.  We have to keep food in front of them all day long as they consume it quickly.

Red Ranger: 3 ounces at one week old

In doing the same with the Cornish Cross, we see that he weighs 4 ounces.  Starting off, we can already see, albeit minimally, that the Cornish Cross is supposed to grow bigger, faster than the Red Ranger.

Cornish Cross: 4 ounces at one week old

Some notable events in chicken growing during this first week:

The little chicks are eating more and more as each day passes, contributing to a stinky garage.  They are just barely starting to put on some tiny feathers.  As I look at the weather forecast, it looks like rain or good chances of it for the next 10 days. That isn't good weather for putting them out on pasture anytime soon.  The earliest I've ever put them out on grass, I think, was around the 3 week point.

We lost three birds today and we haven't pinpointed the reason for the first two although it appears that some of the birds might have piled up on top of them suffocating them.  The other one somehow fell in the waterer and drowned.  We did put a thin layer of fresh hay on top of their soiled hay and we adjusted the heat lamps to ensure that they were getting the exact temperature that the baby birds need at this age.  We're feeding them a Non-GMO, non soy, 18% chick grower at the moment.

We ordered 110 birds and were shipped 117.  Two were dead on arrival, leaving 115. A couple days later, we found another dead in the brooder leaving 114.  Today 3 died, leaving us an current count of 111 chicks.  We'll post an update in a week so that you can see the chicks' status in weekly installments. 

Baby Chicks Arrive! Feb 2015

Each year we order around a hundred or so Cornish Cross Meat Chickens and we raise them from baby chicks until they are between 8 and 10 weeks old.  Then we butcher the birds, cut them up in eight pieces and freeze them in gallon size freezer bags.  This allows us to enjoy chickens for an entire year - chickens that we know have no antibiotics, no hormones, and no medicine added.  We think they just taste better and are better for you than the store bought birds.

I did things a little different this year to experiment.  First, we normally order the baby chicks to be delivered in two batches - late December and early January. What we've noticed is that during those times we experience bad weather with freezing conditions and rain.  My hypothesis is that even though we have a heat lamp over them, the chicks are burning calories keeping warm that they could be using to grow.  Warmer temps should result in a more efficient use of calories and I want to test out that theory.  Secondly, in January and February, there is not a whole lot of grass growing in the pasture for them to eat as I push them to a fresh area each day. Ordering them a month and a half later, we should be able to see more favorable growth patterns due to the temperature and additional grass for them to forage on in addition to the feed.

I'll post once a week status updates on the birds to test out our theory.  I like a set method of doing things, and we've been pretty successful raising chickens over the years, but I'm open to learning better ways.  I ordered the birds online and on Tuesday, February 10th, I got an email from the hatchery that our birds had shipped and that we could expect them at the Post Office within 72 hours. Thursday morning at around 6:00 am we received a call from the Post Office stating, "We have a package for you.  It's ALIVE!"  Tricia motored downtown and picked up a box of chicken.

Box of chicks

It's always amazing to me that you can ship live baby birds that are a day old and they can make it alive to their destination.  Here's how they do it:  They are packed together mighty tight.  Chicks must not be claustrophobic creatures.  When we open the top of the box, here's what we find: they are packed like sardines.  The way they are packed actually helps them because they keep each other warm during shipping.  That is vital.

Secondly, they don't have food or water for 3 days.  The way they accomplish that is that prior to hatching, the chicks eat the egg yolk, giving them nutrition to make it for the 3 day transit period. Pretty neat, huh?

Opening up the box

Baby chicks are some cute little boogers.  There is something uplifting about holding a baby chick in your hands.  They are a little puff ball, light and full of energy.  Too bad they don't stay cute for long, so we enjoy this stage while we can.

Baby Chick

The very first thing we do is fill the chick waterers with water and dip their little beaks into the water and make sure that all of them drink.  I've read that you can even add some honey to the water for extra energy. It's been a long trip and they've got to be thirsty, so we ensure they wet their whistles.

Time for a drink

Chicks will sip the water and then lift their heads, tilting them back and swallow. We make sure that all have swallowed and then we put them down in the brooder. We ordered 110 chicks this year and I'll explain further - I have another experiment going on.  I ordered 100 Cornish Cross Meat birds and, as a first for us, I ordered 10 Red Rangers.

The Cornish Cross birds are freaks of nature.  They are like machines and have been bred to grow astronomically fast, turning protein from the feed into muscle. They aren't much on grazing.  They mainly eat, poop, and sit down.  They are ready for butchering in 8 short weeks.  The Red Rangers, by comparison, are a meat bird that are more 'natural.'  They graze more on grass and are ready for butchering in 12 weeks.  I wanted to try a batch of these and see how we do with them.

This chick quenched his thirst

After watering each chick and counting them, we actually had 117 chicks delivered versus the 110 ordered.  Lots of times hatcheries do this.  Invariably, there are babies that perish during transit, like the two you see in the box below.  Although the hatcheries have an 'honor system' where you call in if you have loss during transit, the extra they give you generally make up for any you lose.  Even the dead chicks help us out as we bury them in the compost pile.  So 117 minus 2 = 115 birds.

RIP little chicks

You don't have to purchase a fancy set-up to raise chickens.  The investment can be as little or as great as you want.  I have a brooder I built on the left and a chicken coop that I altered on the right to be a brooder.  You have to keep the chicks warm or they will die.  To accomplish this I anchored a rope onto the garage door and stretched and attached it to a ladder on the other side that I weighed down with a sack of feed.  Then I have 3 heat lamps hanging off the rope providing the heat they need.  We have 35 chicks in each compartment of the brooder on the right and 45 in the one on the left.  If you're wondering where the cars are, they are outside.  Baby chicks trump the cars for garage space during the 2 - 4 week time frame we have them in the brooder.  If the weather cooperates, I'll try to move these out sooner.

Our makeshift brooders

The first week of their lives they need to be kept at 95 degrees, the second week, 90 degrees and reducing the temperature by 5 degrees until they are ready to go outside.  The chicks will tell you if they are too hot or too cold - you simply have to watch them.  If they are piled up on top of each other in a tight ball, you need to lower the heat lamp.  If there is an empty space beneath your lamp and the chicks are scattered away from the lamp, you know you need to raise it as the chicks are too hot. When they are scattered out evenly like in the photo below, you know the temperature is just right.

Comfortable baby chicks.

We place the waterers in the brooder along with a feed tray and we're diligent about keeping their water and feed filled at all times.  They will eat and drink voraciously, so you have to be on your toes.  Once a week we will give status updates on our birds and we'll weigh them and report on their growth and the results of our experiments.

Love that chicken from Popeye's?  Nah, we love that chicken from Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!