Did I order too many?

I just purchased 30 Jumbo Cornish X's roosters from McMurray and now I am a bit nervous that I ordered too many. Last summer, I did 18 Red Rangers and 2 Cornish X's.

My concern is my space. My plan is to keep them inside for the first week or so. We put them in a little kiddy pool with a light hanging over it for heat. Once they go outside, we plan to keep them in a meat bird coop for a couple weeks....it is 4X8 and has has two lights in it for heat.

Once they hit three weeks or so, the plan was to put them in our 8x8 tractor and move them through the yard everyday. They should be here in a week and suddenly, I feel a bit nervous that the 8x8 tractor will not be large enough for the 30 Cornish X's.

If needed, I could certainly sell a few to make space but I would rather keep them all if possible.

Do you think there's enough space for them in the tractor? I don't really worry about them having enough room at 3 weeks, but those suckers get pretty big by 8 weeks.

Last time, we only had one Cornish X rooster and he dressed out at almost 12 pounds! He was seriously like a freaking turkey, lol....and now there's going to be 30 of them!

Yeah, you'll need another tractor.

Lucky you.

I'm getting the Duke's Mixture on the 24th... FIFTY!!! (straight run)... and yeah, i don't have room, I'll be selling a BUNCH of chickens on CL in April!

I agree, you'll need more space. Perhaps when they start getting too crowded, you can move 10 - 15 back to your 4X8 meat bird coop. Does it have an attached run? If not, could you rig an attached run for 2 or 3 weeks until you butcher.

I had a 6'X12" tractor attached to my minivan/mobile coop to house 35 Freedom Rangers. By about 6 weeks, it was too small and I had to move 15 of them out to another location. Because I butchered over a period of about 3 weeks (week 10 - 13) I took the largest out of each location so as they grew even bigger, I had less chickens in each pen. I don't know if that would work with CornishX.

If you had another 8x8 tractor I would think you could do it with 2 of them easily. You could also process some of them early for Cornish Game hens. Just a thought.

you will most likely need more space. we never wait that long to process them. so if space is an issue you may consider processing them sooner.

UPDATE:

I cancelled my order with McMurray. Heck, it was going to be $100 for 30 roosters. Instead, I am heading to TSC to buy 15 for $1.99 each and then will start another batch in about a month. Doing it this way will save $40 on the 30 birds. The TSC will be straight run, as opposed to all roosters, but oh well.

I think mine is 8x8 - that's two sheets of plywood, right? I've done 50 in it. You just have to move it daily or they make such a mess and run out of clean yummy bugs and grass too quickly.

8x8 is big enough for 30 cornish. We do 80 to 90 in a 10x12. It MUST get moved daily though like goldfinches said.
A bigger pen would be NICER, but not essential provided that it moves daily. These birds were bred to eat, poop, and grow large fast. You have to ask yourself the question: are you doing club med for chickens, or raising them with cost and efficiency in mind for meat?

2happymamas said:

UPDATE:

I cancelled my order with McMurray. Heck, it was going to be $100 for 30 roosters. Instead, I am heading to TSC to buy 15 for $1.99 each and then will start another batch in about a month. Doing it this way will save $40 on the 30 birds. The TSC will be straight run, as opposed to all roosters, but oh well.

Click to expand...

I did straight run last year and the smallest bird I had (hen) was 8lbs and the heaviest (roo) was 15lbs. I did keep them till week 13 though. If you're butchering them yourself then doing a staggered buy would be good, not to mention sometimes you can do discount chicks at TSC.