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I have heard of people keeping back Red Rangers to breed, but bear in mind they are a hybrid bird and won't breed true (though I can't imagine the offspring could be small). My thing is, I can't imagine the ridiculous feed bill those rangers would rack up as mature adults. I had 14 that we...

I agree with slingshotandLAR. Do you have pictures? Are you 100% sure of their age? Because mine grew slowly for Cornish X thanks to some health problems, and a smaller pullet I held back to butcher at a later time is still at least 8 lbs now at 11 weeks.

My crazy birds all do this, too. When I let them out to free range my Australorps in particular all like to lay out on the concrete patio like this. Like you, I thought they were dying at first!

My Golden Comet laid two a day for about the first 6 months and tapered off a bit, but every once in a while I'll get a "bonus" egg, she's currently 1.5 years old. Sex-links are egg laying machines, I bet one of your girls is just living up to her factory production roots.

Yes, I used the utility blades to kill and our regular knife to process. It was much, much easier. We did 19 birds and I used 3 utility blades (so a small package) and we only really needed to hone our processing knife a couple times throughout the day.

I see no reason to tolerate an aggressive rooster, especially if you're having to weed out some anyway. And especially if you're planning on getting chicks out of them at some point, you don't want him passing on those undesirable traits. I'm sure you can easily find someone else that wants an...

Where did you get them from? It's definitely possible something like a leghorn got mixed in if you purchased them from a feed store, all those fuzzy yellow chicks look pretty identical the first few days of life! I had a couple Cornishes (both pullets as well) that were smaller than the others...

Are you talking about the actual butchering or the processing? For the actual slitting necks part, I found this time around that I really enjoyed using a utility knife with "ultra sharp" blades. A blade went through 4-5 chickens easily and I'd change it out. I found that using my processing...

Will they? Yes, eventually. Should they? That's up to you. You have to remember what they were bred for: to grow quickly, give an efficient meat output, and be easy to process. So they instinctively eat, constantly if food is available. You would have to keep her separate and feed her a...

I fed a 20% starter/grower all the way through. We butchered our Cornishes yesterday at 10 weeks old and they gave us an average hanging weight of 6 lbs. They were all still walking and foraging just fine too! We had ours in a tractor with Red Rangers and I think the competition from the Rangers...

Is there any way to run a small heater out to the run just in case? Cornish Xs grow so quickly it's generally easy to put them out around 2-3 weeks, though with it dipping into 55 at night they might need a little something to snuggle with or under. Also, in my experience it's true Cornishes...

I'm seeing much better numbers by others on other threads, down to $5/bird. But for us, we didn't buy feed in bulk because we didn't know what to expect, and with all the losses my numbers may still be higher than normal. However, I do feel like we've learned a LOT and aside from the weather...

We're processing tomorrow so I just did the numbers for my flock. Unfortunately this year we lost half our flock to the flooding at 8 weeks. We had 32 Red Rangers and 6 Cornish X chicks to start (the Cornish X were started 2 weeks after the Rangers), we're butchering 14 Red Rangers and 5 Cornish...

Also in Texas here, lost exactly half my Ranger flock (19 birds) to the storms as well. 11 were all in one night when a flash flood washed under our tractor, the remaining 8 fell ill and died over the next few days. We're processing tomorrow and what's left isn't as large as they should be but...

Yeah, I've got an excel sheet attached to my household budget that I already keep track of things on. I was just hoping for the convenience of a phone app for temporary data storage.

I really haven't found anything with the functionality I'm looking for. I would like a way to track my girls' egg production at the very least. Ideally I'd like to be able to track weight gain and culls of my meaties as well. Is there something I'm missing? If there's not anything really out...

Yeah, that man is full of poop. I've currently got no rooster in with my 6 gals in the coop and haven't since they were brought home a year and a half ago and most of the time I get 5 eggs a day. They free range and eat organic layer feed, have never had a hormone added in their entire lives.

I'm in Texas as well, East Texas to be exact. Several weeks ago I lost a third of my flock to a flash flood that flowed through my tractor. The rest were left coughing and weak and I lost several more over the next few days. I put them back on antibiotic feed and they started doing much better...

There's no reason to get snarky, sometimes it takes some time to get your questions answered. We're people too, not robots that are online 24/7. Also, this might not have been the best section to post in, the "Emergencies/Diseases/Injuries and Cures" actually has an active thread about runny...

So, two of my "pullets" from this year's batch ended up being roos. Oh well, it happens. Anyway, my flock is only really large enough for one rooster (I'll have 12 hens now, 6 of which have been raised with the roos and 6 that are my older girls from a couple years ago). One is a Welsummer, the...