2024 Meat Birds - 6 Weeks Old

This morning my wife and I were reading in the book of Job.  You know the story well.  Job had many calamities befall him.  All on one day.  When he thought it couldn't get any worse after loosing his oxen and donkeys and sheep and servants, another servant came running up and told him that his sons and daughters were having a feast and the eldest son's home.  All of a sudden strong winds came forth and blew the house down on top of them, killing all of Job's children.

What did Job do?  He mourned.  Like anyone would do.  Then he said, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, Blessed be the Name of the Lord."  In all this Job didn't sin.  In fact, his wife told him, "Are you going to retain your dignity?  Curse God and die."  Job told her, "You talk as a foolish woman.  Are you going to receive good from the Lord and not receive the bad?"

First, I began to think of what a righteous man Job was.  I also began to remember when our meat birds were very young and the 80 mph winds blew, knocking over our pecan tree and causing destruction all around.  Tricia and I were in the chicken tractor, trying to hold it down and save our birds from calamity.  Little did we know that we could have been like Job's kids!  Not only that, lightning was flashing all around, crashing like nobody's business.

After the storm passed and I was cleaning up limbs, I picked up this branch that wasn't 150 feet from where we were in the chicken tractor:

Yep, lightning!  It popped a water oak tree in the front yard, burning the branch with considerable voltage and splintering the wood, sending it falling in the yard.  You can see way up in the tree in the photo below where, about 3/4 of the way up, another burned, broken off piece of the limb remains.  That was a close call!

Well, tonight is 'weigh day.'  It's the time I go out and pick out an average bird from the chicken tractor, march it into the garage where I have the scale set up, and weigh the bird.  We purchased straight runs, meaning they could be hens or roosters.  Roosters grow faster and bigger.  This one below is a rooster.

He felt heavy and hot.  I sat him up on the scale to see where he was.

Whoa!  He tipped the scale at 5 pounds, four ounces.

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
• Week 6, they weighed 84 ounces

That's a weight gain of 20 ounces or 1 pound 4 ounces over the last week.  At five pounds and four ounces, that is precisely where we want to be at this point.  I've compared to prior years and this one is right in line with where he needs to be.  At this rate, we are on course for butchering at the 8 week point.  We'll check back in next Wednesday.

2024 Meat Birds - 4 Weeks Old

What's changed in the last week since the last weigh in?  Well, for one thing, their feed trough.  I moved out the small feeders because they kept getting their heads stuck in it.  They're growing.  I replaced the little chick feeders with what we always use - a 10 foot PVC gutter.  It works perfectly.  Now all the chicks can gather around and eat to their hearts' content.  

We still have them on 18% (unmedicated) chick grower.  We keep feed in front of them all day long.  At night, I pull the feed away from them.  In the morning, they're presented with breakfast and kept with food in the gutter all day.  I can tell they are growing and still, no deaths.  0% mortality rate.  Let's see if we can keep that up.

I still feed them bugs at night, but we've had a string of cool nights and that's kept the nightly bug population down.  Although tonight, it's warmed up and so far they've eaten 60 fat beetles.  On my last beetle feeding trip to the chicken tractor, I grabbed an average looking bird and brought him back to the scale in the garage.  He plopped right down.

Surprisingly, the bird is calm and only made some slight noise when I picked him up.

I made sure to zero out the scale before we began.  Here's where ol' boy measures up on the scale for the week 4 weigh in.

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

That's a weight gain of 15 ounces over last week.  As I look at prior years' figures, we are still right where we need to be as far as growth is concerned.  We'll check in next week to see how they continue to progress.  Remember, our goal is a 6 pound bird at eight weeks.  We're still within range of hitting that target.

2024 Meat Birds - 3 Weeks Old

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

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

That's a weight gain of 11 ounces over last week.  As I look at prior years' figures, we are still right where we need to be as far as growth is concerned.  We'll check in next week to see how they continue to progress.

2024 Meat Birds - 1 Week Old

As we've done in prior years, during our meat bird project we'll have weekly updates where we weigh them and discuss how they are doing.  Tonight is episode one.

As time goes on, you notice trends.  Things happen time after time.  When I was farming, I remember plowing the same field year after year.  The turns you made until you finished plowing were the same turns you made in previous years.  The tractor could almost be on auto pilot.  Other things the Lord put in nature comes at the same time every year.  The live oak leaves fall and are replaced with fresh growth, quickly followed by tassels.  Then the little stinging caterpillars fall from the trees.  Ugh!  Then, the june bugs come.  I call them june bugs, but that's not their name, I'm sure.  It's only April.

Anyhow, like clouds of locusts the june bugs come.  Tonight, I thought of a brilliant idea.  Those don't come often, so I thought I should act on it.  I turned on the flood lights and the light attracted the june bugs.  I picked them up.

I learned that I could fit 21 of them in the palm of my hand.  The crawling sensation gave me the frissons.  I threw them down in the brooder and found that the old saying "quicker than a chicken on a june bug" is true!  Those dudes and dudettes went absolutely crazy chasing down the bugs and devouring them.  These are straight run chicks, so I won't know how many are male versus female until a little later.  You want males because they grow bigger and faster.

This is Friday night entertainment on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  I watched the chicks scurry around, grabbing a june bug in their beak.  Then other chicks would try to steal it.  What fun!

I kept walking back to the light and collecting more bugs that were attracted to it...  Like moths to a flame, they sealed their doom.  As of this writing, I've fed 97 bugs to the chicks.  I think they are still hungry believe it or not, so I'll go back out and collect some more high protein june bugs.

So on Wednesday, the majority of the birds (less the 7 we got a few days earlier) turned a week old.  Time to put one on the scale.  This is Tricia's kitchen scale, so I put a piece of paper on it to keep it somewhat clean should the bird decide to have his daily constitutional.

As you can see, at one week old this one weighs 6 1/2 ounces.  Last week it weighed 3 ounces.  It's doubled in size, adding 3 1/2 ounces of body weight in one week.  In looking at prior years' weights, they have been between 6 and 8 ounces at one week, so we're right in the ballpark.

I'll wager that if I feed them 100 june bugs a night, they might weigh as much as me by next week!

2021 Meat Birds - Week Eight

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!

2021 Meat Birds - Week Five

It is once again 'weigh day.'  We normally do this on Thursday as we chart our journey in our annual meat bird raising project.  It is good to have this information to look at and compare year over year.  The birds seem active, alert, and very healthy.  We have not lost a single one since the first or second week, I forget, when we lost one bird that was weak upon arrival.  So that means we still have 50 birds.

We are using 18% Chick Starter and fill the feed troughs several times a day.  This week we added a second trough to give them more room.  As they grow they were unable to all fit around the one gutter we were using to feed them in.  This resulted in aggressive behavior with them all trying to get a "seat at the table."  Now with two, they have more elbow room and things are more serene.

So I went and got a bird for weigh-in.  I'm just grabbing the first one - not the biggest or the smallest.  This bird appears to be a hen.  As they get a little older, you can tell by their combs.  Hens usually grow a little slower that cockrels.

When I put her on the scale, she promptly sat down.  That is a better option than pooping on our scale and that's why I have the diaper on the scale.

So, drum roll, please...  She weighs 3 pounds 7 ounces!

This week they weigh 3 pounds 7 ounces.  Last week they were 2 pounds 4 ounces.  That is a weight gain of 1 pound and 3 ounces over the course of the week.  The weather has been mild and the birds are comfortable, enabling them to use calories to grow versus staying warm, I imagine.

Here's a comparison with where they are now (3 lbs 7 oz.) compared to previous years at this same time frame:

Week Five 2019: 3 pounds 4 ounces.
Week Five 2018: 3 pounds 14 ounces.
Week Five 2017: 2 pounds 15 ounces.
Week Five 2016: 4 pounds

Things are progressing nicely, I think, in our march to a 6 pound bird in Week 8.  Tune back in next week for the next update.

2021 Meat Birds - Week Four

Here we are at Week Four.  If things go well, we are at the halfway point as our goal is to butcher at the 8 week point.  At the end of this post, we'll show where we are at this stage of the process in comparison to previous years based on today's weigh-in data.  Despite a few nights of temperatures in the mid to upper 20's, we had no fatalities.  We still have 50 Cornish Cross Meat birds and they are about the size of Cornish hens right now.

You can notice that our gutter that we use as a feed trough will need to be supplemented at some point in the upcoming week with a second gutter.  The birds have grown and have filled up all the spaces around the table to eat.  I have a second gutter out at the barn just for this purpose.  Humans (and birds) need a little elbow room at the table, don't they?

The next photo shows a couple of things.  First, we have the chicken tractor in the back yard instead of in the pasture.  Ideally, the pasture is the place for this operation as the chicken poop fertilizes the grass, the grass grows, the cows eat the grass and convert it to milk.  A happy, healthy cycle.  Only one problem, we also have goats on the pasture.  Goats are curious and nosy and destructive.  They would climb all over the chicken tractor and destroy it in an hour.  So, the chickens will be fertilizing the grass in the yard.  In the spring we'll set up the portable electric fence in the yard run the cows through the yard eating the grass fertilized by the meat birds.  It'll work out just fine.  Darn goats!

You can see the areas where the chickens were.  There is a trail of brown and that is chicken poop, but is also dirt.  The chickens are eating the grass and that's good.  In a few weeks, the grass will be lush and green in those patches of brown.

So, without further ado, let's weigh the bird.  As usual, I grabbed the bird nearest to me to avoid picking out the largest (or the smallest) bird.  It is healthy and feels heavy and solid.  I carried him into the garage and put it on the scale.  I had to move the scale to another location as the birds have grown and no longer fit under the work light on the work bench where I usually weigh them.

And here is the verdict:  On week 4, the bird weighs 2 pounds four ounces:

As you can see, the weight was 2 pounds 4 ounces this week (Week Four 2021).  Last week they weighed 1 pound 8 ounces.  So that is a 12 ounce gain over the last week.  Here's a comparison of same period, previous years:

In Week Four 2019, the birds weighed 2 pounds 8 ounces

In Week Four 2018, the birds weighed 2 pounds 15 ounces. 

In Week Four 2017, the birds weighed 2 pounds 4 ounces 

In Week Four 2016, the birds weighed 2 pounds 15 ounces

As you can see, they are a little light in comparison to prior years.  I will go up a little on their feed to see if we can catch up.  See ya next week when we check in on their progress.

2021 Meat Birds - Week Three

Thursday afternoon means that the weekend is almost here.  It also means that it is weigh-in day for the Cornish Cross Meat birds.  We like to see how they are growing.  No fatalities this week.  All fifty of them look healthy as can be.  We moved the temporary brooder out of the way in order to give them more room to stretch out and run around and eat grass.  They appear to have enjoyed that!

We also moved in a gutter that we use as a feed trough.  This ensures that as they grow, they all have room "at the table" to eat.  When they get a little bigger, we'll add two gutters.  We also removed the gallon sized waterer and replaced it with the old trusty bell waterer.  It is kind of hidden by one of the heat lamps, but it is gravity fed by a five gallon bucket of water we have outside the chicken tractor.

We only turn the heat lamps on at night since it is 82 degrees (in December).  It is so warm, today I cut the zip ties off the side of the tractor and rolled up the tarp to allow some air flow through the tractor.  It was just too warm and uncomfortable in there.  50 birds put off a lot of heat.  It made them happy to have some fresh air blowing through there.  Once it cools off - it is supposed to be blow freezing next week, we'll tie down the tarp again to protect the birds from the cold.

Alrighty, time to weigh in.  I picked the first bird I could grab from the tractor and brought it in the garage and put it on the scale.  As you can see, The bird is stretching out.  It feels plump and healthy it my hands.

And as you can see, it weighed 1 pound and eight ounces today.  It weighed right at a pound last week.

So in week 3 of 2021, the bird weighed 1 pound 8 ounces.  That's up half a pound from last week.  How does that compare with previous years?

In week 3 of 2019 - the Cornish Cross weighed 1 pound 10 ounces.
In week 3 of 2018, the bird weighed in at 1 pound 10 ounces.
In week 3 of 2017, they weighed 1 pound 9 ounces.
In week 3 of 2016, they weighed 1 pound 15 ounces.

In comparison with previous years, we're off by a few ounces on average, but still on track.  

Ya'll have a very Happy New Year's Celebration!  See ya next year.

2021 Meat Birds - Week Two

I got a little behind in my posts.  It was almost two weeks in when I posted our one week status update.  The chicks came on a Thursday, so I'm back caught up with this post.  Our Cornish Cross Meat Birds are two weeks old (yesterday).  Nothing eventful going on.  No more fatalities.  We still have 50 of the little guys.  They are still in the chicken tractor and we push them to fresh grass each day.  We keep them supplied with fresh water (with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar mixed in).  I'm mixing a 20% protein organic feed with an 18% protein non-organic, but non-medicated feed.

Let me correct that and tell you what I mean.  They probably are not all "guys."  We purchased 50 "Straight Run" chicks.  "Straight run" means that they are not sexed prior to shipment.  Now, you can purchase all males, if you wish, they just cost more.  Many people pay extra for all males.  Males grow faster and bigger and that's what you want when you are raising meat birds.  We're okay with straight run.  The law of averages tells you that about 50% will be males and that's fine with us.

So here is this week's bird for weigh in.  The bird is plump.  I can tell its put on weight.  The feet look like they were "photo-shopped" onto its body, but that's its real feet.  They just look like they belong on a bigger bird.  The rest of the body will grow into those feet in short order.  While we're talking about averages, I'm not picking up the same bird every week.  I grab the first one I can reach down and grab.  So there may be some disparities week over week if I select one that is smaller.  On average, though, it will tell us the story of what we need to know.

Our goal is to achieve a SIX Pound bird in order to yield a FOUR Pound carcass.

Now is time for the weigh-in and we have comparative numbers this week:  Drum Roll....

Chester the Chicken weighs right at 16 ounces this week.  Last week, it weighed 7 ounces.  It doubled its weight in one week.  

Here is a comparison I found from 2019:

2020    We did not raise meat birds in 2020.

2019    At two weeks old the bird weighed exactly 16 ounces.

2018    At two weeks old the bird weighed exactly 18 ounces.

2017    At two weeks old the bird weighed exactly 13 ounces.

2016    At two weeks old the bird weighed exactly 18 ounces.

It looks like we are right where we want to be!  Two weeks down.  Six more to go.  Tune in next week for the next update.

2021 Meat Birds - Week One

Here is the first weekly installment we'll post for the next 8 weeks until these creatures are fully grown and will reside in the deep freeze.  We'll discuss challenges, victories, and the ins and outs of raising your own meat birds for home consumption.  In the last installment, we showed how we moved the 3 day old chicks out of the makeshift brooder in the garage and out into the chicken tractor.

Over the last week we've experienced some 80 degree weather (in late December)!  The chicks were hot.  We turned off the heat lamps.  Then we encountered some cooler weather (in the mid-upper 30's).  The chicks were cold.  We turned the heat lamps back on and lowered them.  If you don't do this, they'll pile up on one another to stay warm and the ones on the bottom will suffocate.  Let's just say we learned this the hard way.

A week into it, and we've only lost one.  That one was smaller than the others.  I think it came in weak from the hatchery.  Before we could quarantine in and nurse it along, it got trampled by the other 50 chicks.  So where we originally had 51 chicks, now we have 50.  Now that we've got them this far, the only fatalities we should experience is from accidents.  We have learned our lesson there, too.  Each day we move the tractor to fresh grass.  If you aren't paying attention, you'll run over them.  There's no bringing back a flat chicken.

So we do this every week.  We bring in a bird and weigh him or her.  We look the bird over and record the weight, comparing with last year's bird at this time and make general observations.  Here we go.  Last week the bird was a yellow puff ball.  This week it is bigger and you can see the white feathers coming out on its wings.  It is slowly making a metamorphosis from a cute thing to a monster bird.  I put a 'diaper' of sorts on top of the scale, so the bird doesn't christen the kitchen scale.  (I would be sleeping out in the chicken tractor if that was to occur!)

The bird weighed 7 ounces.  I wish I would have weighed them the day they came in the mail.

I will be posting shortly the weigh in for Week 2 of the 2021 Cornish Cross Meat Bird Project.  Stay tuned!

2020 Meat Birds - Week Seven

Well here we are in the last week of our Annual Meat Bird Project.  From what we saw last week in Week 6 in the weigh-in, the bird we put on the scale was 6 pounds 4 ounces.  This means they are ready.  We always shoot for a 6 pound bird.  That yields a 4 pound carcass.  We know last week we were at our goal.  This last week was just lagniappe.  We wanted them to grow, but not too much.  Maybe it is just our opinion, but a bird in the 4-5 pound carcass range just seems to taste better to us.

This week nothing eventful happened.  We still only lost 3 birds out of the 50 we started out with over the 7 1/2 week project.  We continue to feed 3 times a day and keep clean water in front of them and we push them to fresh grass two or three times daily.  Tomorrow we'll pick up the chicken plucker that a friend was borrowing and then Friday night we'll set up the outdoor slaughterhouse.

It's Wednesday weigh day.  Let's get this show on the road.  Today I decided to weigh a hen and a rooster.  Roosters grow faster and gets bigger, so I wanted to see how both are doing toward our goal.  First, the hen:

I zeroed out the scale with the box and then set her in it.

5 lbs 12 ounces today.  By the time Saturday morning butchering rolls around, she'll be a tad over 6 pounds.

Now for the rooster.  He's a big guy.  His foot was poised to hop out of the box.

He weighed in at 7 pounds 2 ounces.  Wow.  That's the biggest I think we've ever had.

At the end of seven weeks, the hen and the rooster averaged about 6 and 1/2 pounds. 

To look at previous years at this same time:
*Week 7 2019: 5 pounds 9 ounces
*Week 7 2018: 5 pounds 15 ounces
*Week 7 2017:  4 pounds 1 ounce
*Week 7 2016:  5 pounds 14 ounces
*Week 7 2015:  3 pounds 9 ounces

We will butcher on Saturday and will have plenty to post about that.

2020 Meat Birds - Week Three

This past week continued more of the same for the meat birds.  As they grow, we make changes.  We removed the 3 small feed troughs and replace them with an eight foot long PVC gutter that we use as a feed trough.  We also removed the two 1-gallon waterers and replaced them with a bell-waterer that is fed by gravity flow from a 5-gallon bucket.

The chicks have been on grass since Day 1, and when we push the chicken tractor each day, they scurry to eat the fresh grass even before going for the Chick Grower feed.  We've had a few abnormally cooler evenings, but we've lowered the heat lamps and the growing birds bunch up together underneath them to stay warm. 

One night earlier this week we had some weather blow through with strong winds.  Several years ago, strong straight-line winds blew the chicken tractor over, killing many of the birds.  We learned our lesson.  This year when strong winds are forecast, I stake down the tractor to keep it from flipping over.   Crisis averted.

Weigh in time.  Tonight, I picked up and average bird and carried it into the garage.  I set it on top of the scale for accurate weighing.  Of course I line the top of the kitchen scale with paper to avoid dirtying the scale. 

And here are the Week Three results....

This week - Week 3 - the Cornish Cross weighed 1 pound 14 ounces.  (1 ounce off the 5 year record!)
Last week the bird weighed 1 pound 4 ounces, giving him a weight gain of 10 ounces.
In week 3 of 2019, they weighed 1 pound 10 ounces.
In week 3 of 2018, the bird weighed in at 1 pound 10 ounces.
In week 3 of 2017, they weighed 1 pound 9 ounces.
In week 3 of 2016, they weighed 1 pound 15 ounces.

See ya next Wednesday when we do this again.  At that point they'll be at the halfway point.

2020 Meat Birds - Week 2

We are currently in Week Two of our Annual Meat Bird Project.  We've continued to move the brooder walls outward.  The different thing about this year is that we put them on grass from Day 1.  They really enjoy the grass.  In prior years, we didn't move them out of the garage and put them on grass until Week Three or Four.  This is a good thing and is more natural for the birds.  One thing we've noticed is that when we expand the size of the brooder, the chicks run to eat the blades of fresh grass BEFORE they eat their Chick Grower Ration.

Over the past week, we've put in larger waterers to meet the needs of growing birds.  We have two of them in the brooder along with 3 feed troughs.  We have heat lamps hanging over the chicks, but really don't need them during the day as it is warming up into the 80's. 

Due to the pandemic we did purchase some feed to have stacked up in the event that the feed stores closed.  We don't have quite enough to get them to butchering size, but if the feed ran out and we couldn't get more, we could always butcher them and eat them as Cornish Hens.

The Stockpile

Each Wednesday, I walk out to the chicken tractor and pull out a random, hot, stinky bird and bring it back to the garage in order to be weighed.  We like to track their weight gain to see how things are progressing.

At two weeks old, the 2020 birds weighed 20 ounces. (A 5 year record!)
Last week, the bird weighed 6 ounces, a gain of 14 ounces.
At two weeks old, the 2019 birds weighed 16 ounces.
At two weeks old, the 2018 birds weighed 18 ounces.
At two weeks old, the 2017 birds weighed 13 ounces.
At two weeks old, the 2016 birds weighed 18 ounces.

The birds are doing nicely.  I must report some "not so good" news, though.  One chick died last week and one died this week.  They were smaller than their peers and may have just gotten trampled.  Rain is forecast for tomorrow.  We'll see how things go.  We hope to keep them dry and warm during the storm.  Tune in next week for the next weigh-in.

2019 Meat Birds - Seven Weeks Old

Thursday night.  The routine continues.  I get home from work and fill a bucket with 6 scoops of Chick Grower 18% Protein crumbles.  I walk to the chicken tractor, put the wheels down and slowly push the tractor to fresh grass.  They scurry to the fresh grass and begin pecking at clover.  Being in the same spot all day, they've made a real mess on the ground.  They eat a lot and they poop a lot.

I fill the two gutters with feed and the chickens go CRAZY!  They peck at your legs and your arms... Tricia has little peck marks on her arm where they have pecked at her.  Imagine what has happened in the last seven weeks.  They have grown from little cute, yellow puff balls that weighed an ounce or so into grown up, mean, "monster-birds."

We'll find out in a minute how much they weigh.  I pick out three averaged sized ones.  Now that they are older, I pick out two roosters (since they are larger) and a hen (since they are smaller) to weigh.

We put the first chicken on the scale.  Appropriately, you can see the Lone Star feed behind him.  Those boogers are eating a lot of that stuff.

Holy Moly!  5 pounds 15 ounces!

And now we'll put the hen on the scale...

Bird 1: 5 pounds 10 ounces (rooster)
Bird 2: 5 pounds 15 ounces (rooster)
Bird 3: 5 pounds 2 ounces   (hen)

Drum roll please... 

At the end of seven weeks, the birds weight 5 pounds 9 ounces!  That shows a gain of 1 pound and 4 ounces over last week.  To look at previous years at this same time:

*Week 7 2018: 5 pounds 15 ounces
*Week 7 2017:  4 pounds 1 ounce 
*Week 7 2016:  5 pounds 14 ounces 
*Week 7 2015:  3 pounds 9 ounces

Our goal is a 6 pound bird at the end of 8 weeks.  We were running behind in comparison to previous years, but this last week, we made up a lot of ground.  The birds should be ready by next weekend.  It'll be butchering day next Saturday.