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

[FriedChickenHawk]

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)
View attachment 3462267

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

You can always use a metallic band, like used on wild fowl. Once crimped on, it’s on! Easily make your own outta heavy copper wire…pound semi flat, bend to shape, cut to fit! dremel your info on it.

 

[FriedChickenHawk]

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.

Make a rollaway egg collection laying box. 2 1/2ft bottom drops from zero to 3”-4”(maybe less, as long as egg rolls away EVERYTIME), lined with plastic welcome mat (the kind that has the firm plastic astroturf-like fingers that clean the bottoms of boots)…1 1/2ft - 2ft of layin box, and roughly 6”-12” of covered egg collector, just high enough for eggs to roll under, but not chicken heads/necks! The mat allows semi-sanitary conditions to keep eggs clean.

 

[agarnp]

We are also pretty new at this and I so admire you-it looks like your doing the right things and keeping track of it all. We just processed some 16 wk old roosters hatched from our original chickens (5 New Hampshire hens, one RIR hen and one RIR rooster)
we used an incubator and sucessfully hatched 19 out of 22 last Feb. Of course 6 of those were Roosters so as they grew, we kept them in a Bachelor pad until the were ready to process. I have to say the cross between the large RIR rooster and my lighter colored New Hampshires have resulted in pullets that are larger at 4 months then the one year old RIR hen we had. I hope things continue to work out for your goals. We want to get the most of our hard work with our chickens. I think this forum is so helpful..you get to see what others are doing and learn alot.

 

[Mwhit]

Picture of the cuties in the brooder, just because…
View attachment 3532597

How well is this batch growing? Hope you haven’t lost anymore birds.

 

[imacowgirl2]

How well is this batch growing? Hope you haven’t lost anymore birds.

To me they feel like they’re growing super slow compared to the other batches…but then I looked back at hatch date and realized they’re only 3 to 4 weeks old right now; I weighed two of them today, they’re just under a pound. I don’t have any weights from previous batches at this age, so I’m not sure how that compares to my other batches but that sounds a bit small to me. They moved into the garage for now because something kept picking them off during daylight hours, and the little squirts kept escaping the run even when I wasn’t allowing free ranging. We are down to five of them from 7, and we need 3 of them for my daughters meat pan class at the county fair, so into the garage they went.

Life has been insanely busy around here, so this batch hasn’t been on meat bird feed because I didn’t make it to the feed store to get meat bird crumbles, so they’ve just been eating 18% all flock, so that along with all the stress of the various attacks plus the hot weather has probably all contributed to slowing down their gain. The garage is partially temperature controlled and being in there will limit stress of additional attack attempts, so I will be interested to see how they continue to grow.

(Ignore the white bird, that is one of my whiting true blue pullets)

 

[Molpet]

To me they feel like they’re growing super slow compared to the other batches…but then I looked back at hatch date and realized they’re only 3 to 4 weeks old right now; I weighed two of them today, they’re just under a pound. I don’t have any weights from previous batches at this age, so I’m not sure how that compares to my other batches but that sounds a bit small to me. They moved into the garage for now because something kept picking them off during daylight hours, and the little squirts kept escaping the run even when I wasn’t allowing free ranging. We are down to five of them from 7, and we need 3 of them for my daughters meat pan class at the county fair, so into the garage they went.

Life has been insanely busy around here, so this batch hasn’t been on meat bird feed because I didn’t make it to the feed store to get meat bird crumbles, so they’ve just been eating 18% all flock, so that along with all the stress of the various attacks plus the hot weather has probably all contributed to slowing down their gain. The garage is partially temperature controlled and being in there will limit stress of additional attack attempts, so I will be interested to see how they continue to grow.

(Ignore the white bird, that is one of my whiting true blue pullets)
View attachment 3557606

The all flock I have says for birds over 8 wks. I finally read the bag after a poor batch of meat mutts

 

[imacowgirl2]

The all flock I have says for birds over 8 wks. I finally read the bag after a poor batch of meat mutts

Interesting! Might have to prioritize a trip to the feed store this evening!

 

[imacowgirl2]

Interesting! Might have to prioritize a trip to the feed store this evening!

Meat bird crumbles purchased this morning…we will see how the weights do, and I am also adding a reminder to weigh the newly hatched chicks at 4 weeks and see what they weigh, as that will eliminate the weather factor for the most part (since both batches are being raised in the hot humid summer) and better tell if/how much this batch’s weight was impacted by the all flock feed - the new batch will be on the meat crumbles from day 2.

 

[imacowgirl2]

Update: While I was entering the new batch of 5 chicks into my flock management software, I made it a point to go back and look at my gender guesses on the five remaining chicks from the June 1 hatch based on their coloration variations -- I'm happy to report that out of 4 birds, I had 100% accuracy (there was one that was so vague that I had no guess on its gender at time of tagging). Very small sample size, but it gives me hope that I can continue to maintain the auto-sexing coloration in my flock, which is my third goal behind processing weights and age of egg laying. Of the brand new babies that just hatched this weekend, I am fairly confident that I have two pullets and three cockerels -- we will know in about 3-4 weeks!

 

[Hedgeland Farms]

I've skimmed through this!!!

I love it!!! I am just starting this process as well (will harvest my first from my dual purpose flock in abt 8 wks)


Keep on, keeping on!!

And good luck with your goals!!!

I'll be coming back lol