cornish x — is this flip?

[arthaey_hubby]

today i looked out into our chicken yard and saw one of our big 8 week old meat birds struggling on his back in a mud puddle. i didn't see what made him fall over, but he was like a turtle struggling on its back - he was vigorously trying but could not turn over. I got him back on his feet and set up under a heat lamp to recover since he was soaking wet and covered in mud. he appeared to be okay (good comb color, upright posture, started preening the mud out) but stayed huddled directly under the heat lamp. we got the chicks in the mail from hoover's hatchery and raised them on a 12/12 feed schedule and until now they all appeared very healthy.

I thought about it for a while and ended up processing him today to keep from losing the meat — he dressed out at 8 3/4 lbs, all the entrails looked normal.

the usual background: we have a mixed egg/meat flock that we keep in a yard, no illnesses or abnormal behavior lately. they get purina flock raiser, all they can eat during the day and none at night. the meat birds sleep on the ground in a hardware cloth enclosure under the laying bird's coop; they have a heat lamp that we adjust and generally only turn on when it's raining once they're feathered out - it was on today.

we had a big 15 week broiler apparently have a heart attack last year; we found him upside down just like this one and turned him back over. But his comb was very dark, and his breathing became very, very labored; he never improved and i processed him the next day (15lbs), finding an enlarged heart, fluid in abdomen, and huge fatty deposits. Today's flipped bird had none of that, the heart and liver looked normal, and there was no fluid in the abdomen.

i find myself wondering if this is the "normal" amount of flip in a meat bird flock, or if there's something else going on that i'm not seeing. the references i have say that flip is worst around 3-5 weeks but my birds are way past that, and i found both of them alive. any thoughts?

 

[Molpet]

today i looked out into our chicken yard and saw one of our big 8 week old meat birds struggling on his back in a mud puddle. i didn't see what made him fall over, but he was like a turtle struggling on its back - he was vigorously trying but could not turn over. I got him back on his feet and set up under a heat lamp to recover since he was soaking wet and covered in mud. he appeared to be okay (good comb color, upright posture, started preening the mud out) but stayed huddled directly under the heat lamp. we got the chicks in the mail from hoover's hatchery and raised them on a 12/12 feed schedule and until now they all appeared very healthy.

I thought about it for a while and ended up processing him today to keep from losing the meat — he dressed out at 8 3/4 lbs, all the entrails looked normal.

the usual background: we have a mixed egg/meat flock that we keep in a yard, no illnesses or abnormal behavior lately. they get purina flock raiser, all they can eat during the day and none at night. the meat birds sleep on the ground in a hardware cloth enclosure under the laying bird's coop; they have a heat lamp that we adjust and generally only turn on when it's raining once they're feathered out - it was on today.

we had a big 15 week broiler apparently have a heart attack last year; we found him upside down just like this one and turned him back over. But his comb was very dark, and his breathing became very, very labored; he never improved and i processed him the next day (15lbs), finding an enlarged heart, fluid in abdomen, and huge fatty deposits. Today's flipped bird had none of that, the heart and liver looked normal, and there was no fluid in the abdomen.

i find myself wondering if this is the "normal" amount of flip in a meat bird flock, or if there's something else going on that i'm not seeing. the references i have say that flip is worst around 3-5 weeks but my birds are way past that, and i found both of them alive. any thoughts?

Usually they are butchered by 10 weeks, most do it at 6 to 8 weeks, so not much data on older birds raised for meat