Meat Bird Project - Delaware, White Rock, Dark Cornish

[Bigshooter]

Great to see photos and the change in growth rate, have you considered maybe keeping them on the higher feed for a little while longer to get that boost and see their full potential when comes to picking out breeders? Though I understand issues with fat hens but free ranging should sort that Id imagine?

Really must find out what our equivalent of white rocks are, we have the barred rocks etc here but dont think these are related at all.

@Bigshooter the Dorking is an extremely slow growing bird, they are very slow to mature and so will always be the smallest until they reach closer to maturity, which again could be 6months plus, somewhere with more experience will let you know but reading on them you are looking at a very long term project there

I'm not worried about the Dorking growing slow. I plan on using them mostly for capons and eggs. And hopefully they are as broody as I keep reading. I will cross them just to see what I get but I don't have high hopes for them. Though I have read that Dorking x Delaware makes a good cross.

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

I am doing the same project as you. Plus I also have dorking and naked necks. I don't have weights but just looking at them it's easy to see that the biggest of mine are in order Delaware, NN, WR, DC, Dorking. I'm really surprised at how small the Dorking are. They are a lot smaller than the Del's, NN, and WR. But just a little smaller than the DC. I will try and get some weights on them and post them up.

I also noticed that the Del's seem to be the most aggressive up until they were about 4 weeks old then they seemed to mellow out.

Yes please, I'd be interested in the weights as well. How old are they all now? I hope the Dels calm down a bit more when they hit 4 weeks - for now, I know I'm going to get my hand pecked at by at least 3 of the Del roos, and the 4th jumps up onto the edge of my brooder when the lid is lifted and pecks up toward my head. It's cute now, but when they get a bit older it won't be cute...

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

Great to see photos and the change in growth rate, have you considered maybe keeping them on the higher feed for a little while longer to get that boost and see their full potential when comes to picking out breeders? Though I understand issues with fat hens but free ranging should sort that Id imagine?

Really must find out what our equivalent of white rocks are, we have the barred rocks etc here but dont think these are related at all.

Funny you should ask, yes I'm going to keep the younger set of WRs on the 24% feed to see the weight difference between the cockerels. The only reason I switched the older chicks to 22% was that I saw their chests getting bare and wanted to make sure they were growing healthy. That only lasted a couple days on a few of the larger chicks, so likely it was just them shedding their fluff before their feathers started forming and not a side-effect of missing certain nutrients like I thought in my haste.

I just put the bigger chicks (2.5 weeks old) outside in an old dog cage to keep them confined, and that is locked up in a wing of my coop out of the elements. They've been in there since yesterday morning and don't seem to have any issues. By the time they are 4 weeks old, they'll be in the mobile coop and foraging as well. And the smaller chick will follow a week behind them.

 

[Ulladh]

Well be up in no time and growing away! Will be interesting when it comes to picking your breeders, itll be tempting to keep them all I would say just to see! I should have some La Bresse in a couple weeks I hope!

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

It will be tempting, that's for sure - but I am reminded DAILY by my wife that I have too many chickens. I only really want 2-3 roosters, so if I keep the best from all 3 breeds, the rest will be the "taste test" to determine into which I want to put the most energy and thought. Then the smallest hens will be next on the list for early checkout. I may even need someone to take some of my layers off my hands - I've been lucky to sell all of my eggs every week with the 16 layers I have now, but adding 10 hens may make my egg enterprise a bit too big for my tiny little sales network.

 

[Kiki]

It will be tempting, that's for sure - but I am reminded DAILY by my wife that I have too many chickens. I only really want 2-3 roosters, so if I keep the best from all 3 breeds, the rest will be the "taste test" to determine into which I want to put the most energy and thought. Then the smallest hens will be next on the list for early checkout. I may even need someone to take some of my layers off my hands - I've been lucky to sell all of my eggs every week with the 16 layers I have now, but adding 10 hens may make my egg enterprise a bit too big for my tiny little sales network.

This is an awesome project. I love your stats!

 

[Dlmillion]

I'm so glad to find somebody else doing the same thing as me! I just got 30 females who are now 5 days old and going strong. I have Black Australorps, Delawares, and New Hampshire Reds. My main goal is to develop a sustainable broiler flock and to do so, i imagine that i'll probably end up having about 4 different breeds to maintain which is a project in and of itself.

I don't have any cockerels (unless i received some mis-sexed) but I'm thinking about just ordering 15 or 25 from Murray McMurray hatchery because they have an option of ordering a random assortment of larger breed cockerels. It would be cool to try all sorts of breed and get real numbers and statistics. https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/all_heavies.html

I made up one spreadsheet to keep track of the development of each chick individually but haven't tagged them as of yet because I'm waiting for my wing tags to arrive from Ketchum Manufacturing http://www.ketchummfg.com/wing-bandear-tags-aluminum-numbered

Here's a link to the spreadsheet i developed if you'd like to see the data I have so far. You are more than welcome to keepp it and use it for yourself and modify as you please Also, any and all suggestions are welcome
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8In3P9Jq5XKSDhmb2J0SWpqMjg

 

[Kiki]

I'm so glad to find somebody else doing the same thing as me! I just got 30 females who are now 5 days old and going strong. I have Black Australorps, Delawares, and New Hampshire Reds. My main goal is to develop a sustainable broiler flock and to do so, i imagine that i'll probably end up having about 4 different breeds to maintain which is a project in and of itself.

I don't have any cockerels (unless i received some mis-sexed) but I'm thinking about just ordering 15 or 25 from Murray McMurray hatchery because they have an option of ordering a random assortment of larger breed cockerels. It would be cool to try all sorts of breed and get real numbers and statistics. https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/all_heavies.html

I made up one spreadsheet to keep track of the development of each chick individually but haven't tagged them as of yet because I'm waiting for my wing tags to arrive from Ketchum Manufacturing http://www.ketchummfg.com/wing-bandear-tags-aluminum-numbered

Here's a link to the spreadsheet i developed if you'd like to see the data I have so far. You are more than welcome to keepp it and use it for yourself and modify as you please Also, any and all suggestions are welcome
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8In3P9Jq5XKSDhmb2J0SWpqMjg

Awesome!

I am so excited to see you both do this "work" for me! I love it!

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

So with the amount of chicks I now have, I'm going through about as much food as I expected when I started the project. I'm probably at a rate of about 4 lbs of feed per pound of growth - that is overall, for all 3 types of chicks, and including the spillage.

However, I've been reading about fermented feed and it seems like the cost- and health-benefits are just too good to pass up. The conversion rate is supposed to go down, and they're supposed to have better immunity and health overall. I just started my first batch of fermented feed for both my meat chicks and my current layers. I fully expect there to be some transition time, but I don't expect it to affect their growth rate at all, just their feed consumption.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[KoopOnTruckin]

I'm so glad to find somebody else doing the same thing as me! I just got 30 females who are now 5 days old and going strong. I have Black Australorps, Delawares, and New Hampshire Reds. My main goal is to develop a sustainable broiler flock and to do so, i imagine that i'll probably end up having about 4 different breeds to maintain which is a project in and of itself.

I don't have any cockerels (unless i received some mis-sexed) but I'm thinking about just ordering 15 or 25 from Murray McMurray hatchery because they have an option of ordering a random assortment of larger breed cockerels. It would be cool to try all sorts of breed and get real numbers and statistics. https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/all_heavies.html

I made up one spreadsheet to keep track of the development of each chick individually but haven't tagged them as of yet because I'm waiting for my wing tags to arrive from Ketchum Manufacturing http://www.ketchummfg.com/wing-bandear-tags-aluminum-numbered

Here's a link to the spreadsheet i developed if you'd like to see the data I have so far. You are more than welcome to keepp it and use it for yourself and modify as you please Also, any and all suggestions are welcome
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8In3P9Jq5XKSDhmb2J0SWpqMjg

I love the spreadsheet! I'm definitely going to take some ideas from this, it's really thorough. My spreadsheet is just labeled by color of leg band(s), as I didn't want to name them until I pick out the "keepers" from the rest. I like the column for temperment, that makes a huge difference. Let me know how those wing tags work out for you!

In the "Week 1" weights, were those when the chicks arrived or was that when they turned 7 days old? And condolences on "Hillary"...