Ramblings of a newbie starting a self-sustaining meat bird flock…

[imacowgirl2]

Starting a thread to keep track of my progress with my meat bird flock…

I started with New Hampshires from Henry Noll’s line from Freedom Ranger hatchery in August 2022 after reading of numerous people’s success with the birds here on the forums. I had a batch of 15 ordered, and due to early losses (my fault, not the hatchery fault), ended up with 3 in the freezer, 3 hens held back for breeding, and 2 roosters held back for breeding.

Because I wasn’t going to have enough birds from my own flock to refill the freezer this spring, I ordered another batch from Freedom Ranger in January 2023, hatch date 1/16/23, and currently have 18 of them getting close to processing. I am also going to hold about 4-5 hens from this group back for breeding.

Most exciting is that we have our first two chicks from our birds hatched and in the brooder: (The black one is an australorp chick from our laying flock)

I have two hens of laying age (had to cull the other one for crop issues — she had a wad of long grass in her crop when I processed her) and 1 rooster, and am seeing almost 100% fertility on the eggs we are still eating, so that alleviates the concern I have been asked about by numerous people whether the roosters get too big to breed…apparently not, or if they do, it’s later in life.

Short term goals:
1. Do some crazy studying up in next few weeks to help me determine how to best choose who to cull and who to keep. I did a little bit of reading last time but just ended up going by solely weight at butchering age.
2. Learn how to wing band…I’ve been interested in it for awhile, especially now that our current birds are starting to lose leg bands more frequently. I think solid ID of birds will be key moving forward as I start to learn how to better select for the traits I want.
3. Figure out a good method of record keeping…and figure out what data I need to keep record of.

Mid-range goals:
1. Raise 50%+ of chicken we consume within 3 years
2. Become better educated about various breeding methods for selecting for specific traits.

Long term goals:
1. Raise 100% of the chicken we consume within 5 years

 

[imacowgirl2]

Processed three roosters today. They were 14 weeks old today. I kept the three biggest to evaluate for the replacement backup rooster — so I processed the ones that weighed 9.8 lbs, 9.7 lbs, and 9.7 lbs. Processed weights were 6.0 lbs, 5.8 lbs and 5.6 lbs, so right at 60% of live weight.

I also processed the mean Australorp cockerel who used to be the head honcho in the bachelor pad…he processed out at 3.4 lbs.

From start to finish it took me 2 hours 15 mins…once I figured out better how to deal with the wings and cutting the vent off the body cavity, things sped up considerably. And anyone who says older roosters aren’t harder to skin is full of lies…that darn mean rooster took me 45 mins of that time. I was doing it all myself except my son killed them for me — so I was pretty pleased with an average of 15-20 mins per bird, since last time (my first time) took us over 2 hours for 3 birds, and there were two of us.

 

[imacowgirl2]

My housing setup for these birds:

8’x10’ hoop coop, with sides that I will mostly roll up within the next week or so as it gets warm consistently here.

Run is roughly 20’ wide by 15’ long - the whole run is roughly 40’ long but I have about 25’ off that fenced off and only turn them in that part occasionally, with hopes that I may be able to get the grass to survive long(er) term to provide some ranging area for the hens and rooster who are long term occupants.

Water is an 8 gallon vacuum galvanized container…I’m not 100% happy with it because of how hard it if to refill, especially if it doesn’t go empty first, so I’m planning on replacing this with a large trash can with poultry cups. For my layers, I prefer vertical or horizontal nipples, but I just feel like these birds can’t get enough water out of the nipples.

For feed, we are using a 10 foot vinyl gutter, attached to the outside of the run fence, with a piece of vinyl siding attached to the fence above it to provide a partial roof and to keep the layer flock out of the meatbird feed. This has worked really well…the only drawback is that the rooster can’t get his head through the fence due to his large wattle and comb, so I provide him some food in a small dish on the inside of the pen next to where the gutter is.

And a couple pics of the pretty ladies, who are hanging out in the layer hens “free range pen” until I get enough eggs collected to set:

 

[imacowgirl2]

Those weights sound nice! Congrats

And I'm sorry to hear you have an egg eater. She may need to go in the stew pot if the usual tricks don't work lol. That's just bad luck though. You have so few hens and one turns out to be an egg eater! I'm sure you already know this stuff but make sure she's getting enough calcium and protein, and throw some fake eggs or golf balls in the nest. That's always my first course of action and then there are other steps you can take after that.

I actually don’t think it’s one of the hens…I think it’s one (or more) of the current growers headed to freezer camp in a few weeks — we didn’t have any issues until last week or the week before. Hoping it’s one of the growers anyways, I’m about to find out either way lol.

 

[imacowgirl2]

Quick update: one of the young pullets has started laying. Leg banded everyone yesterday to help determine which one it is, because she just earned herself a free pass as a lifetime member of the flock…she started laying right at four months old!! All the pullets I held back, even the couple that were supposed to be processed but weren’t, weren’t crazy small at my ideal processing age of 14 weeks, so I want to see if she will pass this early egg laying on to her offspring…it would be amazing to routinely have pullets laying at 4 months that are also weighing in at 7+ lbs at 14 weeks…talk about truly dual purpose bird!

 

[imacowgirl2]

Following. Would love to hear how these turn out for you, as far as development, management style, meat growth, processing time, etc. I've been eyeing these for a while and am really interested in whether these might work for me too.

Definitely!! I was REALLY happy with the first batch of these I did, we ended up with 2 of the 3 birds being right at/over 4.5-5 lbs dressed at 13 week butchering age. This batch did battle some coccidiosis so I think we will probably be going an extra week or two with them to get those weights. I plan on weighing some tomorrow or the next day since we are approaching the 12 week mark.

This time I did also feed meat bird crumble almost exclusively - last batch only had all flock pellets (after chick starter) because I didn’t even think about feeding meat bird feed. I had intended to keep track of feed consumption but my daughter accidentally fed meat bird feed to the layer flock for almost a week, and then we ran out of meat bird feed unexpectedly so the meat birds ate all flock a couple days…so there is no saving that math

 

[imacowgirl2]

Apparently lost one of the two hens this weekend…they got mixed into the layer flock when I was trying to collect eggs on Friday and I couldn’t get her caught back out before we had to leave town for the weekend. Yesterday I noticed that I didn’t see her, but thought she might just be free ranging somewhere with some of the layers. However, she wasn’t in the coop last night, so unless she has gone broody somewhere, she is likely gone. Unfortunately I think she might be the one of the two that was laying…going to crate the other one and see if I get any eggs because I really need eggs to set for daughters 4-H show.

 

[imacowgirl2]

Apparently lost one of the two hens this weekend…they got mixed into the layer flock when I was trying to collect eggs on Friday and I couldn’t get her caught back out before we had to leave town for the weekend. Yesterday I noticed that I didn’t see her, but thought she might just be free ranging somewhere with some of the layers. However, she wasn’t in the coop last night, so unless she has gone broody somewhere, she is likely gone. Unfortunately I think she might be the one of the two that was laying…going to crate the other one and see if I get any eggs because I really need eggs to set for daughters 4-H show.

The missing hen walked up out of nowhere this morning when my daughter called her laying hens! She has definitely not been in the coop or anywhere in the yard the past 4 days, so no idea where she was. If we didn’t have so much going on today, I’d be tempted to leave her free ranging and try to figure out if she might have a nest somewhere…however, I don’t think I have the tolerance to leave her free ranging roost while we are gone.

Also confirmed, the other hen IS laying eggs…good news all around this morning.

 

[imacowgirl2]

Weights from last night…the young birds will all be 14 weeks on Monday.

Weighing these birds in a zipper top reusable grocery bag is definitely the way to go! Once they are zipped in it’s dark, so they just lay right down and it’s super easy to hang the bag on a fish scale and get a weight.

Also surprised to see that the 7 month old rooster only weighs two pounds more than the young ones…that helps further alleviate lingering fears of keeping the biggest roosters, since it seems they don’t grow a ton more later. He definitely FELT a lot heavier then the young boys according to my daughter who was doing the catching.

 

[imacowgirl2]

Those look so great!! Congrats!

Is it more difficult to pluck older roosters, or do you just have the personal preference of skinning?

I’ve not tried plucking yet at all…I’m typically only doing a handful of birds at a time, and all the setup (and tear down) for plucking would add significant time that I’m not sure is worth it, especially since I pressure cook 100% of my birds.

Also I’m not sure I could handle the smell of wet birds…I’m likely still carrying some trauma from that one time back in the day that my father in law decided we were going to butcher a bunch of old hens…when it was 90 degrees in the shade and I was 8.5 months pregnant. Zero stars, do not recommend!