2026 Meat Birds - Week Three

It's weigh-in Wednesday!  Let's talk about our Cornish Cross meat birds.  There have been lots of changes going on since last week.  First, I removed the brooder to give them more room.  They are growing exponentially and the protective brooder while ideal for chicks, didn't leave them with enough elbow room once they start putting on weight.  I rolled it up and stored it back in the barn and now the birds have plenty of space to move around and eat grass and bugs inside the chicken tractor.

They bunched up at first, unfamiliar with their new-found freedom, but soon moved around liking the new surroundings and space.  They'll clip down the grass in the tractor with the quickness, so I'll roll the tractor to fresh grass each day.

You can see the second and third changes in the photo below.  First, I moved out the three small feeders that are designed for baby chicks.  While perfect at first, there is no longer room for them to gather around at the supper table at the little chick feeders.  To replace the small feeders, I moved in a 12 foot span of PVC gutters.  The gutter will be the new feeder and you can scroll up to the top photo to see the chicks breaking bread around the gutter.  There's now room, but I'll move in a second gutter in the upcoming weeks to give them even more room.

The third change is the waterers.  Up to now I have had two 1 gallon waterers in with the chicks, but these chickens drink a lot of water and I find myself filling the 1 gallon containers several times a day.  I installed a bell waterer to alleviate this.  You can see it hanging from the top of the tractor.  You can see a cascade of water flowing down from the top.

The water flows into the bell waterer from a plastic tube feeding off of a 5 gallon bucket filled with water.  I have the 5 gallon bucket full of water sitting atop 2 buckets to use gravity to flow the water through the tube and down into the bell waterer.  This year I have the buckets in a wagon so that when I roll the tractor, I'll just roll the water in the wagon as well.  This keeps me from having to enter the tractor to fill water.  I simply fill the yellow bucket with fresh water from outside.

Time to weigh!  Each Wednesday I grab one bird out of the flock - an average bird, not the biggest, not the smallest.  I think this gives us a good idea of their overall growth.  I carry it into the garage and place it on the kitchen scale.  It's not a little cute chick anymore.  It's a monster.  Big feet.  Ugly.  Sorry, but it's true.  Around Easter time, people give kids cute baby chicks.  You wouldn't want to give something that looks like this to a child.  It just looks mean.

Here is the bird looking at me warily standing on top of the scale.  The glare blocks the weight so scroll down to the next photo to see this week's weight.

At the end of week three, our bird weighs 2 pounds 1 ounce or 33 ounces.  That is a weight gain of 13 ounces over last week - almost a pound weight gain.

At the end of week three of last year, the bird weighed 29 ounces, so we're 4 ounces ahead of where we were same time last year.

We're right on track!  We still have 50 healthy birds 38% toward their projected slaughter date.  Everything is progressing nicely.  Tune in next Wednesday for the next weigh-in.