Cackle's Fry Pan Special

[griffinchicken]

Oh my goodness!! I was NOT counting on that much feed!!! (my birds haven't come yet) ok so how old are yours that they are eating 5 gal bucket! over all how many bags of broiler feed will you use?

 

[travifive]

As a worst case scenario (no pasture grazing at all) you should plan on abt 17# per bird from day one to 8 weeks. If you have them on pasture that will drop considerably. My 50 broilers are 37 days and have gone through close to 400lbs. I have 20 days left and I am shooting for only a 200lbs more. As they get older they will forage more and that will offset some of the rise in feed consumption due to size. Also, this is my first batch of the season and my pasture is not where I want it to be in quality so that also adds to my feed costs. They quite the greedy little pigs.

 

[griffinchicken]

thank you so much for your help!! I am a planner and I just have to know what to expect!! thank you!!

 

[travifive]

No problem. Glad my obsession with mmeat birds is finally paying off. )

 

[OHSpartan]

I got a black jersey giant, two buff brahma roos, and two wyandottes as part of a hatchery special. They were born the same day as my cx's and will be 8 wks old on Monday. Their food consumption is hard to guess because they are in with other chicks. I am, however, anxious to see how big they get, at what age and what they taste like relative to the cx's. if I like them, I will likely breed wyandottes and brahmas as my own dual purpose birds.

 

[griffinchicken]

that is interesting, we also purchase a 5 roosters to raise for meat, to conduct our own comparison... Would love to know what you think after harvest.

 

[missnu01]

I have some roosters in the brooder now same age as the cx and nothing can possibly beat the growth of the meat birds...

 

[griffinchicken]

I am looking forward to ours coming.. .we have had such a long winter I am glad we put off getting them until now.. still pretty cold here today, and expecting ice and snow this weekend

 

[SquareInchFarm]

I have 100 chicks from a frypan special that are going out to pasture next week. I'm planning on processing at 14-16 weeks. Starting with the largest and allowing the smaller ones to catch up. I normally just do Cornish cross, which are excellent from cackle, but this was an experiment just to see what they would look like. I hope this helps.

at 14-16 weeks do these roosters crow a lot?

thanks a lot

 

[travifive]

squareinchfarm,

I can't remember any starting to crow from that batch. I would say if any did it would be a very small number and at that age it wouldn't be much of a crow. Their hormones usually don't start kicking in until around the 15-16th week so they don't really have the urge or ability.

On a side note I haven't done another batch of those. I didn't get very good weight to feed ratios.