White Cornish: Building a Quality, Sustainable Flock for Meat and More.....

[JRNash]

FD,ditto on keeping the feed simple.

 

[Fairview01]

That makes sense. Mine get a lot of cracked corn they like scratching around. I keep the layer pen free choice 16% as much as they want.Right now EVERYONE is free ranging while I finish up the last parts of the layer pen. Only went 50 x 50 the way I've layed it out I'm going to build three more 50 x 50 pens end to end. At the center (100ft) I'm going to build another 12 x 16 coop .each corner will have miniature coops 4 x 8 with small runs to keep breeders in

I'm in a similar process of laying out pens. So call me stupid but is the 50x50 pen going to be subdivided into smaller sections. I'm having a hard time visualizing what it's going to be.

 

[ZachyWachy]

I wish that I could be laying out pens, but my parents think that we have enough chickens(NEVER!!!)
But hopefully I will convince them to get me at least some cx for dinner next year.

 

[JRNash]

I will end up with a 50 x 200 pen. Small corner coops with a fenced run parallel with the pen that way I can utilize pen as another "wall"

 

[MTchicknman]

I stay with starter, 20% protein for longer than most.... till they are all 16 weeks or so. Then I usually switch to a flock raiser for a few months.... by late fall everyone gets the same 16% layena and stays on it. I only keep one feed till the chicks hatch again in the spring. Everyone on the same feed makes life a lot simpler.... Iv heard stories of cockerels getting too much calcium from the layer ration, cause'n kidney failure etc.... I have never seen any issues of the sort. But to be honest my program uses a bird for 2 seasons. Which makes the oldest bird 3 years old. That may be why it's never been a problem... all my birds have feed most of the time.... I fill all feeders every afternoon. The only ones that are ever empty are the teenagers in the growout pens. What is left they paddle out on the ground looking for choice morsels.

We've been debating that very point about when to change from starter to layer feed for our chickens - thanks for putting that up.

We made the choice for this year to go with CornishX, because of the short Summers we have here and also we got a late start on the meat birds. We'll butcher the Cornish (plus some scrubs we got at Tractor Supply), the end of this month at about 8 or 9 weeks, hopefully.

The rest of our flock are Brahma, Turken, Orpington and Australorp for eggs thru the Winter.

Next Spring we will buy some straight Cornish .... whatever we can get from a hatchery, for our meat birds and then after that we'll be breeding our own. Looking toward Red-Laced or Dark Cornish - (no white from what I've seen), any advice as to which might be the best meat bird between the two?

Can't afford show stock, and besides, I don't think there are any shows around here ;>).

It's funny, when I was a youngster (back in the '40's and '50's), we always had chickens and it was so easy to take care of them - taking care of the sheep, milking the cow, and weeding the garden was the 'hard' stuff ..... now that I'm older, I realize that my parents took on all the hard work of building pens, coops, etc. and we kids just enjoyed the fruits of their labors!

Also, I've left you a PM on FlockInn.
Thanks.

 

[Fairview01]

K

I will end up with a 50 x 200 pen. Small corner coops with a fenced run parallel with the pen that way I can utilize pen as another "wall"

Well I'm going to have to work on a much smaller scale. My wife is not that understanding. At 40+ chickens my wife put her foot down and said I couldn't buy any more chickens. Less than 48 hours later she's setting 30 some eggs I received in the mail. I reminded her she didn't say anything about eggs.

So this is what I'm going to build. 4x6 pens. The sides are 2x10s. 10' sticks of 3/4" pvc held tight with conduit straps. If necessary I could build a couple in a day. Technically I could spilt it down the middle and have 2 breeding pens with trios and each bird would have 4sqft of space.

 

[spangledcornish]

Just a little on our feeding program we also like to keep things simple, we feed a 20% chick starter for about 6-8 weeks, we then switch to a duck and goose grower pellet (I am a big fan of pelleted feed vs. crumble). the Duck and goose grower is 18% and contains a higher fat % than the starter or the layer, and our breeder pens then get a layer pellet that is 16% otherwise backups just get the duck and goose grower. as this feed is cheaper than both the layer or the starter and birds seem to maintain very well on it we also use this for the base feed in our conditioning pens.

 

[JRNash]

FD I almost made some of those. And I've used the egg line ONCE.lol
I like pellet feed also. The bobs and Cots keep me buying the crumble

 

[JRNash]

FD the only reason I didn't was because I wanted to be able to walk into it. It was also cheaper for me to rip treated 2x4s.

 

[JRNash]

I've got buckets full of those conduit straps around here