Now that the weather is back into the 70's and 80's during the day and 50's at night, 4 weeks later, now about 8 weeks old, they are finally feathering out ans yes they are a different breed. They are just passing up my layers I hatched out a week before the meaties came. They are very active and free range with the rest of the flocks. They eat a 18% protein pellet, since the fermented feed and wet feed both were too messy, with these birds for me. We had 2 nights that dropped below 32 degrees, so we had to run a generator for heat lamps for the naked birds. We are due another cold night on Monday night, so we'll crank up the generator again. These meat birds from Meyers are a different breed and are a lot slower growing. They are not nearly big enough to harvest yet, as they would not even make a Cornish hen dish. They are starting to put on a little more weight, now that they have some feathers, but will take another 3 to 4 weeks just to get to fried size. I would raise this breed again, maybe, if I could get all males and it was summer, but never, never, never again in the winter or all females. We lost a lot, even with heat lamps, due to their lack of feathers. No bird I have ever raised of any type or breed took 8 weeks to start feathering. For almost 8 weeks these birds looked like they were already PLUCKED, the only feathers they had was on the wings! NO JOKING !
