Want to grow meat chickens but need some help.

[rmorey]

Recently retired and we're moving to our 200 acre woodlot/new home. We have issues with the antibiotics fed to chicken and want to raise our own. Does anybody have any experience raising meat chickens? What feed is best? What housing (chicken coop) do we use. I assume a dozen chickens to start. Way over my head.

 

[TSC18]

There is a lot of information on Tractorsupply.com website. Should answer most of your questions.

 

[Creamer]

Let me get this started. We used to raise about 200 birds a year for meat and then have a few egg layers as well.

For a pure meat bird - Cornish Rock Cross - fast growth and good feed conversion. We used to take the hens out at six to six and a half weeks as they would dress 5-6 lbs and would only add fat after that age. The cockerels would keep on growing and we took quite a few of them to ten to eleven weeks and dress them at 10+ lbs. Used them as roasters.

Feed - special mix only. High corn and soybean meal concentration with a special premix that is high in Vitamin B and minerals. One of the biggest issues with these birds are keeping their feet under them. They grow so fast that often their legs do not keep up and this is a feed issue. Talk to the feed mill and if they hem and haw a little about what you need move on. Once they start going down you are in trouble as their is almost no recovery. Also add a vitamin B stress pack to the water for the first couple of weeks - very important in keeping the death rate down.

If you buy a feed at TSC or somewhere like that it will probably have antibiotics mixed in as they make it simple for them and their buyers but it is not organic food.

The other trick we used was to buy our chicks late - usually early July. Little chicks like it real warm 90+ F. I never did understand why people bought chicks in March and April and then have death loss due to the temperature in their area falling into the 80s. Plus the big chickens do not handle heat real well so if you buy in early to mid July you should be by the bad heat before they are too big.

I used a small shed that housed them until they were about 3 weeks old and then I had a pen with a roof over part of it. The pen was fenced in with Poultry fencing (looks like woven wire but it is about six feet tall and has very small holes at the bottom. The poultry netting was too much lightweight and too much trouble to keep up. I did have owl problems one year so I started putting a nylon netting over the open area to keep the owl out. One year we had a great horned Owl visiting us about every other night and he would kill 5-6 birds each time he visited. Very frustrating. Put the netting over and he still got in but could not get out. I pulled the netting back and let him out and he never came back again. Pretty amazing to be within 10' of a bird like that. Very scary as well.

You need to make sure the fence is tied down to the ground as varmints are good at pushing under it. Think skunks, raccoons, mink, etc. I usually laid landscape timbers all the way around and stapled the bottom of the fence to them.

Also, the Cornish Rock Cross do not need a roost. They have a hard enough time getting from the water to the feed. In fact I found out the hard way one year when I moved the water too far away from where it had been because it got muddy. They didn't drink for two days because they could not find it.

Another option would be to purchase a dual purpose birds like the Rhode Island Reds. You can let them run for the day and let them back in at night to roost. If you are only going to have 12 or so you could build a little roll around coop with a wire mesh floor for automatic cleaning. Just move it every day to keep from killing the grass. They do a wonderful job on bugs but they can be kind of hard on a garden as they like tomatoes and other vegetables real well. With this breed they do not grow near as fast and you do not need the special feed. In fact you can feed them your kitchen garbage and they will love it. Cucumbers that got too big, rotten tomatoes, etc. If you want to have some fun throw some potato bugs or japanese beetles in their pen. These will nto get as big but will be much easier to raise. My daughter kept one rooster as a pet for a few years - he was a fun one and would come to the house looking for her - literally going around the house and looking in the windows and peck at the window when he found her. Another fun sight was the day that four chicken hawks descended on my flock out running around the yard. The hens took cover and the cockerels came out to fight. I saw them knock one chicken hawk right out of the air and attack it. he got away but they all left and didn't come back.

hope this helps!

 

[Creamer]

TSC18 - nice tractor. Loved that 66 series. What is that a 9?

 

[rmorey]

Creamer,

Thanks for all that. Great post. Thats the type of things I needed to know.

 

[forgeblast]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin
Polyface, Inc.
he has a great book on raising chickens free range etc.

 

[dmccarty]

You need about 5 square feet of space in the coop per bird. I think it can be a bit less if the birds are smaller but five is easy to remember and a bit more space is better for the birds anyway. We have six chickens for eggs and Pet Duty that live in a 64 square foot coop plus they get to free range during the afternoon.

The chick starter feed we used had antibiotics in the feed to keep the chicks from getting sick. The adult laying feed we use does not have antibiotics. The wifey is buying some super expensive organic feed that is supposed to provide a better balance of Omega 3 and 6. There is evidence that part of our diet problems are caused by meat that is grain fed. Cattle and chickens do not normally eat grain, they want grass and chickens want grass and bugs. Grain mixtures can lead to an imbalance in Omega 3 and 6 which then has health problems for people.

For us, it would be cheaper to buy the expensive Omega balanced eggs at the store than feeding the danged chickens the expensive feed we are using. Maybe they feed cost will decrease when the grass and weeds start to grow again. Last year we tried to grow a mix of plants for the chickens but we started too late for the seeds to grow. We will try again this year.

One of the Cook Illustrated magazines had an interesting report on chickens. I can't remember the exact number but the size of chickens has doubled or tripled in the last 40ish years. In the same time frame, the chickens are growing to market size in 1/2 to 1/3 of the time. This has been done through breeding but also knowing how create the optimum environment for the chickens which are eating the optimum diet to allow them to grow in the shortest period of time.

I have been watching the original French Chief shows from the mid 60's which are a hoot to watch. :laughing::laughing::laughing: The last episode I watched was about chicken. Julia Childs was cooking chicken breasts and showing how to remove them from a whole chicken. The chicken breast she was using were danged SMALL! Much smaller than we would get in the store today. The meat she was getting of the whole chicken were just thin and small. I would guess it would take at least two of the chicken breasts she had to equal what we would get at the store.

Don't forget that you can "can" meat so you have other options of preserving the chicken than just freezing.

Later,
Dan

 

[Egon]

First you gotta decide on flavour & nutritional valve versa meat quantity. :thumbsup:

Then do some research on how to achieve your goal.

Don't know much about raising chickens but when I was a kid I got to feed them and clean the chicken house. Now I try and avoid the factory product as much as possible. Sorta like cardboard.

Remember, quick growth and well fertilized grains don't make for quality eatin!:thumbsup:

 

[NorTracNY]

If you prefer to have another option than the CRC, I had great success raising Freedom Rangers last year. I pastured them on grass and saved some in feed prices as well as let them eat more of a natural diet. I processed them at 11.5weeks, but it was too long. I probably should have done it at 10.

I have never tried the CRC. I was looking for a bird that could walk. As already mentioned, the CRC are bred to grow fast! I was told to expect to lose a few because their legs would give out or they'd have a heart attack. I'm guessing that the CRC would be more cost efficient since you can harvest them 2-4 weeks sooner.

 

[DKCDKC]

I would love to raise some meat birds, but simply can't justify the expense given the relatively low price of locally-raised, organic birds. Looking at prices for the chickens versus the cost of coop, fencing, feed and what-all... I'd have to have a lot of birds over many years just to make my investment back. And I have acres of land on which I could graze them. But I will keep looking at the market... And may just give in are get some, and write the cost off as a hobby or something.