First time meat birds

jarcoo0153

Songster
9 Years
Mar 13, 2010
471
9
144
Levelland, Texas
I'm sure there is already a thread out there. But anyways I just ordered 25 Cornish rocks from ideal that will be here next week. My questions are:

1.) It is recommended to feed high rations and high protein feed from what I have read. Would purina flock raise be good enough? And if so what kind of rations?

2.) I have seen that this cross grows extremely fast and wondered if they are situ le to keep with other chicks? And will they be ready in 4-6 weeks or so they need longer or how do you decide when they have had enough time to grow?

3.) has anybody had problems with laying on each other and killing some birds. I read where it had happened and have seen several posts that there is a high death rate?

Thanks for everyone's help!
Jared.
 
I haven't had cx in years but last year I did some rainbows and rangers and they were always piling at night and I did lose a couple. For cx I would feed a meat bird feed off around 21% and either feed 12 hours on and 12 hours off or feed as much as they will eat in a certain amount of time twice a day. Free feeding tends to lead to lameness and heart problems. I personally wouldn't keep them with my other chickens, they're messy and will hog all the feed.
 
That feed will be fine, 20% protein is perfect in my opinion for the CX, which is what that is.

In my experience, they're ready between 7-9 weeks. At week 7 we slaughter the largest 3rd, repeat on weeks 8 and 9. Males obviously reach ideal slaughter weight first, and there are runts, so its handy to do have multiple processing days.

We do 12 hours on, 12 hours off feed, just to prevent leg/cardio deaths.... this is in salatin style pens.

They're just like any other chick until about weeks 3-4 except for how much they eat and poop, brood them properly and they'll be fine. I haven't found them to be any more fragile at this stage than anything else.
 
I use Flock Raiser Crumbles from chick to butcher and find they meat up well. One mistake I made when getting started was I was very loose with the 12hrs on 12hrs off feeding schedule. It would be more like 14+hrs on and that year I had a bunch die suddenly from "flipover'. The ones that survived were 7-10lbs at 8 weeks. Moving forward I have been getting all males and being very strict to the 12/12 feeding schedule. By 6 weeks they are right around 6lbs (see the attached chart - not mine but it lines up pretty good with what I've seen). That's what I shoot for because after 6 weeks their average weight gain starts to decrease but the food consumption keeps going up.

I have not had them kill each other but they are very aggressive. I have just started getting all males but I think that helps. They all grow about the same rate so you don't have the bigger males walking over the smaller females.


 

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