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We're planning to harvest them at 10 weeks. It will provide 6-7 broilers for the freezer (I may have to get a second chest freezer).
I'm thinking about getting six more chicks in about a month, when the current batch have moved to the outdoor coop.
I had meat chickens and 8 weeks was too late. The chickens were too big, in the sense that when I cooked them the breast meat portions were enormous, more like a turkey, fine for slicing big slices of sandwich meat but otherwise dry.
6 weeks would have been better.
Meat chickens eat a lot, and poop a lot, that's why they grow so fast. Laying breeds are cleaner to keep.
Can you kill and pluck them without feeling sad about it? Knowing me the way I do, I would already have named them and then not been able to eat them. I've thought, at times, that it would be nice to have some egg layers but that is not allowed where I live. And then I remembered that I really don't like eggs very much so that was that. :-)
I will cry the first time I have to kill one of our animals. We plan on having meat birds, maybe rabbits and definitely sheep. We currently have two layers. We named them Bok & Bach... although Bach is now Broody Bach because she went broody on us for a while. We broke her of that. But yes, if/when the time comes, I will kill them and process them and enjoy their meat. That is the circle of life. I'll cry and cry and cry, probably every time, but I'll still do it. Like I've told my husband many times now, I refuse to be the girl that can't survive the zombie apocalypse because I can't kill an animal to eat!! LOL
Meat chickens eat a lot, and poop a lot, that's why they grow so fast. Laying breeds are cleaner to keep.
Not by too much! We have our two layers in our backyard right now because we're still building our permanent spot for them. OMG the poop is everywhere! Even on the windows and the walls... it's disgusting!! LOL
Yes, we did have one who crowed, when we were without a rooster for awhile. - And did the little *cluck* *cluck* beckon thing to court the other hens when she found a good treat for them.
I don't think we're supposed to ask questions any more.
No chickens yet but they are on our radar. They do make a privately owned fertilizer plant that doesn't get taxed. The best days of my life were spent with my grandfather when he introduce me to raising chickens. I learned to process old hens before I was a teen. It was life and I did like chicken and dumplings. I love pet hens too. There is nothing wrong in keeping an old hen or two around for pets whether they lay or now. Cheaper to maintain than a dog going to the vet..... You just don't need to keep a flock around that doesn't lay. Chickens vary in personality a lot by breeds too. One think I will always remember is when my favorite named pet hen went broody and hatched over a dozen kids. Watching her take care of them is a fond memory. And yes mine too came from Murry McMurry in the 50's.
My wife and In the early stages of getting this off the ground actually. I have workable plans for my coop and enclosure, and I have done my homework as far as process is concerned. I have also been in touch with a hatchery close by which many of our neighbors swear by. I think we are going to get started in the Spring. Hopefully by that time the price of lumber is a little bit less, but I won't hold my breath.
I had meat chickens and 8 weeks was too late. The chickens were too big, in the sense that when I cooked them the breast meat portions were enormous, more like a turkey, fine for slicing big slices of sandwich meat but otherwise dry.
6 weeks would have been better.
Meat chickens eat a lot, and poop a lot, that's why they grow so fast. Laying breeds are cleaner to keep.
Yup we harvested them at 9 weeks. Would have been 8 weeks but I just kept putting it off. Should have done it at 5 or 6 weeks. They were so large they barely fit in the cone, and the cone was supposed to be for large chickens and even turkeys.
I personally dispatched all 7 birds, and my wife helped with the de-feathering and gutting. Killing the birds was humanely done, I believe, but it was just really hard. These Cornish Cross hens were so good natured and friendly, and when I picked one up, it would hide its beak in my chest. Very hard to do. I had tears.
The teenager's job was to babysit the rooster, who was upset at seeing the girls being grabbed. She had the bird indoors somewhere and made a Tiktok video with it. We kept that bird around for a few more weeks, but he was crowing incessantly and we're not allowed to have roosters in our town actually, so finally we brought him to a guy who runs an aviary out of his house and land, accepts and sells all sorts of birds. It's likely the rooster ended up in someone's soup pot, but we like to think and hope it went to a good home.
We ended up with 7 large birds in the freezer; we have eaten one so far. Good meat, very large bird. Six to go.
The thing I got from this experience is: it's hard to do, but the next time we do it, probably next spring or summer, it will be easier. I did pick up a de-feathering gadget off Ebay, a steel cylinder with rubber fingers that you plug the thing into your electric drill and supposedly it rips the feathers right off. It basically didn't work at all. Not sure what I did wrong. I did soak the carcasses in water at 154 degrees F, just like people said, for 30-45 seconds. It turned out to be easier to just yank the feathers out with a towel. I wrote to the Ebay seller and asked what I did wrong, and they gave me back some of my money. Who said ebayers aren't good to their customers?
Oh, and the other thing I learned: I never want to buy factory chicken from a commercial meat processor ever again. From now on, I either raise them myself or I get certified free range hens from a reliable source such as Whole Foods. (Just a side note: WF sells some birds that are "guaranteed organic vegetarian fed" which makes little sense to me -- chickens like to eat bugs, need to eat bugs, also worms, and will even attack and kill mice who are unlucky enough to wander into a coop!)
Then, in August, we got six egg layers from McMurray, Red Star breed which is supposed to be a prolific layer, friendly, though they tend to fly.
While they were hanging out in the indoor brooder, I built a larger coop 4'x8' and 5' to 6' tall (slanted roof). I wanted to be able to walk in, and have plenty of space for a nesting shelf and also a perching bar or two. They stayed strictly in the coop for a few weeks, then finally I got some fencing from Premier 1 and set up a run that they could play in during the day. We have a lot of predators in our area -- raccoons, foxes, coyotes, skunks, possums, the neighbor's coon cat -- and my trail cam has captured them wandering through our yard during the wee hours -- so we always put them back in the coop at dusk.
These Red Stars are interesting birds. Whenever I, or another of my family, comes outside, they all rush to the door of the coop, or to the edge of the fence if they're outdoors, and make cooing sounds. They're about 3 months old, still juveniles, and when I go into the run, they all come over and one or two always start pecking at my boots, looking for bugs I guess. My daughter has been picking them up since they were little, so I guess to some extent they're accustomed to being handled, but they'll still run away if you just walk toward them and try to grab them.
I have a hanging food dispenser that works pretty well and holds several days of feed. The water is problematic though; galvanized steel water dispenser that is always filling up with bedding, poop, straw etc. Lately it's been freezing overnight. I need to figure out something pretty soon. I think I'm going to put it up on a little platform, maybe 2" or 3" high, that will keep it level (the coop's on a bit of a hill) and above the bedding. Also I ordered a small lizard warming mat and I'm going to try and seal it into a Foodsaver bag and place it under the water tank, to prevent freezing.
There's electric power to the coop, and it's got the heat lamp hanging above the roosting shelf. I've heard that you should wean them off the heat, but it was bitter cold a couple of weeks back and I just didn't want them to freeze out there. It's going to be very cold soon. I have heard that chickens can get frostbite, and I don't want them hurt or suffering their very first winter while they're still very young. Any thoughts on this?
We expect them to start laying some time in the early spring. If they're as prolific as they say, we're going to eventually get 2-3 dozen eggs a week. I really only wanted 4 birds, but McMurray had a minimum of 6, and we can have 6 without a permit in our town, so I figured, why not?
28 per week should be your average with Red Stars... I'm going to opt for raising French Black Copper Marans. Fewer eggs but I will be keeping roosters with them and this breeds roosters get along better with each other than a lot of other breeds do. I like the idea of those very dark brown eggs too. They look nice when packed in clear cartons to sell at the farmers market and often bring a $ a dozen premium. The best market will be hatching eggs for this breed.
"French Black Copper Marans". They had too much attitude for my liking. I too was drawn to the chocolate eggs...a better criteria would have been docile nature, or good layer.
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