Trials And Tribulations Of Suburban Meat Bird Production

[Birdinhand]

well it's day 22 and time for an update! I've switched them over to pellets and they made the transition fine. I wish I had noticed all my bags of grower formula were pellets, I would have preferred to continue with the crumble for a bit longer. my biggest surprise this week is how well the half composted wood chips are working. the CX seem to be staying much dryer and cleaner on it than pine shavings. I'm finding that it works well enough to just put on a glove and remove the layer that clods up at the surface, it ends up being a decent ratio of wood chips and droppings for the composter. the Jaraform insulated composter is working like a champ with steam billowing forth when I open the door, I feel like I'm shoveling coal into a furnace sometimes, chicken poop is like gasoline to the microbes! it's getting so hot that it's actually drying out, so I had to add some water, I haven't gotten a probe in there but I bet we are topping 150 f, I could probably hard "boil" an egg in there.

I took a few pics to show how these guys/gals are coming, they are happy, healthy and huge. the cobb 500 are not the gross monsters you often hear people complaining about when referring to cornish cross, especially when they are given the space and care they deserve! I am so glad I decided to go earlier this year, the days are in the low 50's and the nights are in the low 40's and it kind of seems perfect, no worries of overheating, and no flies, yay! I'm a little intimidated as to how the coming weeks will go with the veritable river of poop that is in my future, i've emptied all of my various bins, so I'm as ready as I'll ever be. the garden and fruit trees have all gotten a good dose of fantastic compost this spring from last year.

 

[Kusanar]

If I were to raise cornish cross, I would likely start them mid fall, that way it's still kinda warm when they are chicks, but then you can process in the cold and they won't overheat since it's cool out. Never have understood why people with poultry process in summer and fall when everyone else tries to process in winter to chill the meat down without a ton of ice.

 

[Birdinhand]

If I were to raise cornish cross, I would likely start them mid fall, that way it's still kinda warm when they are chicks, but then you can process in the cold and they won't overheat since it's cool out. Never have understood why people with poultry process in summer and fall when everyone else tries to process in winter to chill the meat down without a ton of ice.

it's so common here to have cool wet weather from january to june that it's often referred to as Junuary, so I think spring is a good time for CX as well as fall in the Pacific Northwest. the spring of 2016 was very unusual, we ended up getting very hot (for here) weather early, which kind of redefined my sense of timing on this. these birds have an intense metabolism, they generate a lot more heat than the typical egg layer so heat seems to be more the issue than cold, as long as drafts are kept to a minimum and a heat lamp is provided.

 

[Kusanar]

Quote:
Ahh, that makes sense, here, it is already 80 some days and tends to be at or around 100 with 80% humidity in July... so, yeah... not cool at all in the summer. But we still have the lovely below 0 days in the winter too...

 

[Birdinhand]

well, I double checked and tomorrow will be 4 weeks/28 days from hatch... I don't think this will ever stop boggling my mind. our other assorted chicks (barnvelder, speckled sussix, black sex link, blue andalusion) appear to be eating, drinking and growing... in slow motion in comparison. I shovel the food and water in to the CX at least twice a day and shovel out large quantities of droppings and each time I look over at the other brooder and not much has changed, water changes and food can last for days, bedding is dry. so far our COBB 500 are staying clean and relatively enjoyable to care for and they still have spunk and pluck, still running and flying but the thud of their footsteps is getting more noticable.


I did notice one chick not running up to eat from the feeder in the morning while everyone else climbed all over each other to get to the food when I reintroduced it so we brought it inside, it had gone down to 38 f last night. it was droopy, tail and head down and empty craw. it had the intestinal flora out of whack look. I've seen this before so I ran down to the grange and got some medication based on what has worked with these symptoms in the past and fortunately I think we caught it in time. the little guy got to rest inside under a heat lamp away from the herd of elephants. after being forced to drink the medicated water many times over several hours it began to perk up and drink on it's own. then mid day it began eating and is now up and preening, it even jumped out of it's enclosure at one point and briefly came face to face with the dog and so I made a few adjustments to it's mini brooder to make sure that didn't happen again. it will be reintroduced after the morning feeding if all goes well overnight and it looks like it has the energy to sustain itself back in the fray.

 

[Birdinhand]

well, my daughter had a run in with the heat lamp! second degree burn in the blink of an eye as she was gathering up some chicks for her and her brother to hold, to add insult to injury her rabbit scratched the blister and now we are having to fight infection potential head on. I made a plexiglass brace for her wrist since it's right on the wrist crease. I am now motivated to find an alternative heat source for brooding. I don't know why no one makes an incubator that converts into a brooder once the hatch is done, it's kind of a no brainer rather than have to duplicate the heat source and thermostat. At the very least I am starting on a design of a radiant heat matt or panel type heat source, something like a big under tank heater pasted to a thick pyrex baking dish hung from the ceiling that would provide a warm hutch for the chicks. it would be awesome to be able to have the CX sleep at night and not have to take the food away or close it up. I also think the moist heat would be better for them than the super intense dry heat of a heat lamp and it would be nice to get away from the burn and fire danger. in the third picture is a zoo med UTH mounted to a baking dish that I used in a DIY coolerbator and it worked well without a thermostat. I kept the room at a constant temp and adjusted air circulation through ports in the sides. the baking dish was filled with cypress mulch to maintain humidity since it is so good at holding water. it provided an 80% hatch success rate. I'm contemplating modifying this and hanging it in the brooder with just 8 chicks and then scaling up to deal with the larger population of CX. oh, and an update on our sick chick, it appears to have made a full recovery overnight. Once I saw some normal looking droppings and it was looking around bored and lonely I put it back with the others and so far so good!

 

[Kusanar]

First, I want to say OUCH! but, have you looked at the "mama heating pad" thread? They take a wire hoop, and get a heating pad that doesn't have the 2 hour cut off feature, wrap it in a towel and attach it over the wire so the chicks go under or on top of the hoop and get the heat from the heating pad. Also, I have seen something similar that is ready made for the purpose, but it looks more like a plastic tray with legs that they can get under and on.

I worked at a greenhouse for a while and I want to try to use the idea they had for their seedling starting bed. The way that they did that, is that they had a hot water heater hooked up in a continuous loop with PVC that went in a serpentine pattern on the bottom of the bed, this was then covered in pearlite (to make a smooth flat surface for the flats to sit on and to distribute the heat better) and then they put a temp probe in one flat. The temp probe would keep that flat (and the others indirectly) a certain temp by turning the hot water on and off as needed. I was thinking the same setup with half the brooder area having the PVC and the other section not, and cover it all in sand or Sweet PDZ, then put a box or something on about half the area that is heated, so you have 3 zones: hot - in the enclosed area on the heat, Warm - outside but on the heat, and Cool - outside and off the heat. Then you temp adjust so that at the top of the sand IN the box is whatever the brooder temp should be and let the chicks tell you what they want from there. If they all hide in the box, they are cold, if they are all at the far end away from the heat, they are hot, if the bulk of them are outside the box on the heat, they are happy.

 

[Birdinhand]

I've just started following a thread like it, not sure if it's the same one, I'll do a search and see. thanks for the tip! we have a tortoise, two ball pythons and tropical fish and a substantial terrarium along with 37 CX chicks, 6 egg layers and 8 layer chicks in a separate brooder... it's kind of a menagerie over here, LOL! the interesting thing is that people go round and round on the heat lamp canundrum in the ball python on line communities as well. it turns out that what is sold for reptiles at places like petco is really best for desert reptiles and not so good for savannah or rain forest reptiles. radiant heat panels of various sorts are really just becoming popular and it's got me thinking that such a thing would be good for a brooder. in the ball python community they have zeroed in on Jump Start, the brand of heating pads and thermostats used to sprout starts for the garden in the early spring. these are very low wattage, relatively rugged mats of various sizes. I use a jump start thermostat to control a heat panel I made from glass and a under tank heater and it works quite well and they can be had for under $30 on amazon. I've thought about using either a zoo med or a jump start heat pad on glass for better thermal mass/radiant heat and a jump start thermostat and ringing the pad with something like fake grass as a curtain so the chicks could slip in and out without all the heat escaping. I like the idea of having three distinct zones. fortunately chicks are better at regulating their temp than reptiles, a snake will just sit there and burn like a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water, unable to tell it's overheated. chicks rotate from the inside area surrounded by each other, where it's very warm, to the outer edge or the outside, at least that is what i've seen with the lamp. I am reluctant to go with a heating pad, it's a much higher wattage appliance, but that's probably because I'm more familiar with these other options. I do want to keep in mind the failure mode, most of these heating sources, when they fail, fail on, full blast which is both a heat and health hazard. heat encapsulation is the big problem that leads to over heating, if there is not enough circulation and the heat concentrates too quickly, it can cause a fire. there is another brand of heat heat source called flex watt, which may be perfect for chicks, it is relatively cheap and low wattage and even if it fails on, is not high enough wattage to typically cause much harm.

 

[Kusanar]

I've just started following a thread like it, not sure if it's the same one, I'll do a search and see.  thanks for the tip!  we have a tortoise, two ball pythons and tropical fish and a substantial terrarium along with 37 CX chicks, 6 egg layers and 8 layer chicks in a separate brooder... it's kind of a menagerie over here, LOL!  the interesting thing is that people go round and round on the heat lamp canundrum in the ball python on line communities as well.  it turns out that what is sold for reptiles at places like petco is really best for desert reptiles and not so good for savannah or rain forest reptiles.  radiant heat panels of various sorts are really just becoming popular and it's got me thinking that such a thing would be good for a brooder.  in the ball python community they have zeroed in on Jump Start, the brand of heating pads and thermostats used to sprout starts for the garden in the early spring.  these are very low wattage, relatively rugged mats of various sizes.  I use a jump start thermostat to control a heat panel I made from glass and a under tank heater and it works quite well and they can be had for under $30 on amazon.  I've thought about using either a zoo med or a jump start heat pad on glass for better thermal mass/radiant heat and a jump start thermostat and ringing the pad with something like fake grass as a curtain so the chicks could slip in and out without all the heat escaping.  I like the idea of having three distinct zones.  fortunately chicks are better at regulating their temp than reptiles, a snake will just sit there and burn like a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water, unable to tell it's overheated.  chicks rotate from the inside area surrounded by each other, where it's very warm, to the outer edge or the outside, at least that is what i've seen with the lamp.  I am reluctant to go with a heating pad, it's a much higher wattage appliance, but that's probably because I'm more familiar with these other options.  I do want to keep in mind the failure mode, most of these heating sources, when they fail, fail on, full blast which is both a heat and health hazard.  heat encapsulation is the big problem that leads to over heating, if there is not enough circulation and the heat concentrates too quickly, it can cause a fire.  there is another brand of heat heat source called flex watt, which may be perfect for chicks, it is relatively cheap and low wattage and even if it fails on, is not high enough wattage to typically cause much harm.

Looks like I certainly got you thinking outside the box! Be sure to let us know what you decide on and how it works for you!

 

[Birdinhand]

well here is the comparison shot at 5 weeks, just a few days ago! the kiddos love hamming it up! this last week I have turned off the heat lamp completely. I had taken down some of the wind block but I temporarily put it back up to make sure they made it through the transition Ok, as it's been windy and a bit nippy. the birds have remained plucky and spry, still running about and the roos are getting cocky and sparring a bit. we are heading into the home stretch towards harvest day at around 8 weeks. I have been working on the cleaning stations so everything is all set up and ready to go. I'm very excited to use the yard bird plucker for the first time!

I thought I would say a few words about poop and moisture management. I am ready to claim some level of victory over last year's go. the partially broken down wood chips seem to be doing wonders. somehow they are allowing the moisture to evaporate better, perhaps because they don't mat down so easily like the pine shavings and because there are the occasional worms and beetles, the chickens dig around a lot and keep it turning over. I really wish I knew what kind of wood the chips were made from so I could pass that on. I do believe these chips have had a chance to be sitting, exposed to the weather for at least 2 years and are not from pine. I think it's maple. some of it is more like a wood dust and it appears that the chickens eat it and it appears that it helps firm up their bowels. I am not seeing nearly as much runny diarrhea as last year. about 3/4 of the droppings are well formed with the typical to chickens, white urate. they are remaining remarkably clean with very little upkeep, like clean enough to actually want to handle them. the total volume of "tailings" is far less than last year. I kind of can't believe I'm past five weeks and still keeping up with it all. by this time last year I was pulling together every container I had to store it in and the smell was disgusting. this year is a bit different though as I have the insulated tumbler composter and it is working overtime cranking out mostly composted mulch in 3-4 weeks per side. it's really nice to get this stuff heated up so much, it seems to be keeping the flies from going nuts, maybe killing the larvae. last year was a bad fly year. I'm a few days away from emptying the second side of the jaraform composter since these guys arrived. it is marvelous to have a source of some of the best compost money could buy as a byproduct of this operation.

my efforts to achieve a grow out of CX that are both happy, healthy and huge seems to be working so far. the next couple of weeks should be very interesting!