First batch of CornishX- 3 in the fridge today- fermented feed, notes and some growth data

[AbbyDog]

So I have been raising my first batch of meat birds, and after butchering 3 of them today, thought I would share some of my experiences and "data". I started giving them fermented organic starter at one week after being totally shocked by their expulsive diarrhea. i also limited their food, feeding several times a day but only what they could eat in a few minutes. They also got outside everyday in a small tractor in my yard. by 4 weeks, they had just finished their first 50lb bag of fermented feed, and weighed 2.3 lbs (pullets) and 2.6 lbs (cockerels). I became worried that I was not feeding them enough, so I doubled then tripled the amount of food- and they enthusiastically plowed into it. By 5 weeks they weighed about 3 lbs for pullets and 3.6 for cockerels.At 39 days, the pullets were at 3.7, cockerels 4.6. At 44 days, the cockerels were all too heavy for my 5 lb scale, and i broke open the 3rd 50lb bag of feed. Today, day 47, I butchered the smallest pullet "Gimpy" and two average cockerels. Gimpy's live weight was 3.68 lb, dressed carcass 2.32. She had been crippled since week 2 and it was only getting worse. Her brothers were 6 lbs and 6.6 lbs, and dressed out to 4.3 and 4.8 lbs, respectively. This does not include the feet, giblets, neck or liver, which we will also eat. The conversion of live to dressed was 0.72 for both cockerels!

Blood and feathers went into compost pile, heads went to the dogs, feet went into making stock and we will have fried chicken on the 4th of July! 1.3 lbs of "guts" were buried. I am quite pleased with the large amount of meat, but find it a little daunting that it took me roughly 3 hours from start to end of clean-up and I still have 7 left to do! I know that it will go faster next time. My boyfriend did not help at all and hid out in the house

Notes on the actual killing: after agonizing over this for the past 6 weeks, I finally decided to make a cone out of a paper feedbag stapled to a board that sat upright in a garbage can with shavings to catch the blood. I bought a new poultry "vent" knife and sharpened it right before hand. It took me about 30 minutes to work up the courage to slit the first one. Taking a life is the most difficult thing I have ever done! Contrary to what others have said, my chickens did NOt pass out while upside down- which made it sort of unnerving as every time I would put the knife to the throat their eyes would open and stare at me. I finally couldn't take the delay any longer and just went for it. I slashed then jumped away and ran and hid in the kitchen. The 2nd and 3rd time, i held their beak and head while they bled. the last one was alive for a few minutes- thankfully he was quite calm- unlike his brother who was very vocal. Next time I will definitely be sure to cut the vocal cords.

On day 38, i was preparing to go out of town for 2 days so I built new feeding troughs to hold more mash. i filled up both troughs which last all day and they were not ravenously hungry the next morning when a friend stopped by to feed them. i can't imagine how much food they would have gone through had i fed them unlimited for the whole time. Now that they have been eating all day long, their poos are very loose and i can see some undigested corn and grain.

I figured that the 10 birds used about 120 lbs of feed in 47 days. This is quite a bit less than what I was expecting So, I got 10.4 lbs of carcass meat (not including giblets, neck, feet etc) for 36 lbs of feed- given our local price of $34/ 50 lb bag of 22% organic chick starter, I estimate my chicken dinner will cost $2.35 a pound, based on feed alone...






Any way, it's been both fun and rather horrifying raising these funny birds. i will probably do it again but still have to get through the remaining 7 and get them to the freezer, before I put it on the calendar. We don't eat that much meat, so i figure one chicken every couple of weeks-so maybe in September or October i will get another batch. Hope my notes help some of you!

 

[gingit]

Thanks for the detailed info, AbbyDog.
What kind of organic feed did you use? Soy free or not?

 

[burnyourmoney]

Great write-up, thank you!

We just got our first order of meat birds, all 200 of them. It should be exciting. It's kind of unnerving thinking about how much feed they are going to plow through.

 

[Oregon Blues]

Yikes! 200 birds. You'll get lots of meat, but I'm glad I won't have that feed bill for the 8 weeks they are growing.

You must be growing some to sell. Best luck and I hope you make lots of money.

 

[AbbyDog]

The organic chick starter feed came from Modesto Mills, is 22% protein and the first two ingredients are corn and soy. At least it is organic...I was thinking about other protein sources-- very interested in trying to grow duck weed- but then again I have both soy milk and tofu in my fridge right now so it seemed like maybe I was worrying too much. Plus, I live on a tiny urban lot so I'm limited.

The 3 birds that I have butchered so far looked totally healthy on the inside- nothing funky, discolored or swollen. Quite a relief after doing a recent autopsy on two hens that had fatty liver disease, tumours and messed up ovaries.

The only think that I would do differently is to get them out of the brooder at night and into a coop sooner. I was taking them in and out every day to a tractor in my yard, but was sticking them back into a large cardboard box in a spare room at night as my spare coop still had a sick chicken in it. Finally, it got cleaned out and I felt OK about leaving them in it- and that was at nearly 5 weeks.
I do have to say that I think that limiting their feed (and fermenting it) is really the way to go. On the days that I have giving them unlimited slop, their poos are super runny and basically look like liquid chicken feed with undigested corn bits. They just keep eating which maybe forces it out sooner..?

My last comment is that I really like these birds. At 4 weeks old they pecked me a lot, but not now. They are so calm and gentle and they make nice noises- and they are super funny when they "run" around. I am not looking forward to killing them, but I am looking forward to eating them at a later date.

We are having fried chicken for the holiday dinner tonight!

 

[burnyourmoney]

Yikes! 200 birds.  You'll get lots of meat, but I'm glad I won't have that feed bill for the 8 weeks they are growing.

You must be growing some to sell.  Best luck and I hope you make lots of money.

We are feeding 30+ people so it's actually not enough. But we figured it's a safe place to start incase we run into troubles.

 

[bj taylor]

really great post. i'm still at the starting gate. i haven't gotten any meat birds yet; although i'm facing too many roosters right now. i think i'm going to try to decapitate them. the bleed out takes longer than i can handle i think.

 

[SunkissedChicks]

So I have been raising my first batch of meat birds, and after butchering 3 of them today, thought I would share some of my experiences and "data". I started giving them fermented organic starter at one week after being totally shocked by their expulsive diarrhea. i also limited their food, feeding several times a day but only what they could eat in a few minutes. They also got outside everyday in a small tractor in my yard. by 4 weeks, they had just finished their first 50lb bag of fermented feed, and weighed 2.3 lbs (pullets) and 2.6 lbs (cockerels). I became worried that I was not feeding them enough, so I doubled then tripled the amount of food- and they enthusiastically plowed into it. By 5 weeks they weighed about 3 lbs for pullets and 3.6 for cockerels.At 39 days, the pullets were at 3.7, cockerels 4.6. At 44 days, the cockerels were all too heavy for my 5 lb scale, and i broke open the 3rd 50lb bag of feed. Today, day 47, I butchered the smallest pullet "Gimpy" and two average cockerels. Gimpy's live weight was 3.68 lb, dressed carcass 2.32. She had been crippled since week 2 and it was only getting worse. Her brothers were 6 lbs and 6.6 lbs, and dressed out to 4.3 and 4.8 lbs, respectively. This does not include the feet, giblets, neck or liver, which we will also eat. The conversion of live to dressed was 0.72 for both cockerels!

Blood and feathers went into compost pile, heads went to the dogs, feet went into making stock and we will have fried chicken on the 4th of July! 1.3 lbs of "guts" were buried. I am quite pleased with the large amount of meat, but find it a little daunting that it took me roughly 3 hours from start to end of clean-up and I still have 7 left to do! I know that it will go faster next time. My boyfriend did not help at all and hid out in the house

Notes on the actual killing: after agonizing over this for the past 6 weeks, I finally decided to make a cone out of a paper feedbag stapled to a board that sat upright in a garbage can with shavings to catch the blood. I bought a new poultry "vent" knife and sharpened it right before hand. It took me about 30 minutes to work up the courage to slit the first one. Taking a life is the most difficult thing I have ever done! Contrary to what others have said, my chickens did NOt pass out while upside down- which made it sort of unnerving as every time I would put the knife to the throat their eyes would open and stare at me. I finally couldn't take the delay any longer and just went for it. I slashed then jumped away and ran and hid in the kitchen. The 2nd and 3rd time, i held their beak and head while they bled. the last one was alive for a few minutes- thankfully he was quite calm- unlike his brother who was very vocal. Next time I will definitely be sure to cut the vocal cords.

On day 38, i was preparing to go out of town for 2 days so I built new feeding troughs to hold more mash. i filled up both troughs which last all day and they were not ravenously hungry the next morning when a friend stopped by to feed them. i can't imagine how much food they would have gone through had i fed them unlimited for the whole time. Now that they have been eating all day long, their poos are very loose and i can see some undigested corn and grain.

I figured that the 10 birds used about 120 lbs of feed in 47 days. This is quite a bit less than what I was expecting So, I got 10.4 lbs of carcass meat (not including giblets, neck, feet etc) for 36 lbs of feed- given our local price of $34/ 50 lb bag of 22% organic chick starter, I estimate my chicken dinner will cost $2.35 a pound, based on feed alone...






Any way, it's been both fun and rather horrifying raising these funny birds. i will probably do it again but still have to get through the remaining 7 and get them to the freezer, before I put it on the calendar. We don't eat that much meat, so i figure one chicken every couple of weeks-so maybe in September or October i will get another batch. Hope my notes help some of you!

Hello, I am also female and did my first four birds two weeks ago. It was much more easy than when I was over thinking everything all of the time. I don't know if you saw my slaughter video. The birds were very calm and it worked out perfectly.
You did a nice job of cleaning the bird.

 

[SunkissedChicks]

really great post. i'm still at the starting gate. i haven't gotten any meat birds yet; although i'm facing too many roosters right now. i think i'm going to try to decapitate them. the bleed out takes longer than i can handle i think.

The bleed takes only a couple of minutes.
This is me slaughtering my 4th bird.

 

[AbbyDog]

I just saw your video, thanks for sharing the link. I am not so brave to use the knife with the bird in my lap, as you are! My friends are stunned that I would think of killing something I've raised, but I feel good about how i treated them and even loved them a bit for the brief time they were with us. And, I have to say that the fried chicken we had on the 4th was the BEST chicken I have ever eaten.

I noticed a difference in the amount of blood and rate of flow between the 3 birds I just did. Two sort of oozed out and one really spurted. I couldn't tell- did you cut the vein and windpipe too?

I found that getting the water temp closer to 150 makes the feathers come out VERY easily. On one bird, the water temp had dropped to 145 and it was much harder.