Cornish X Journal

[CommonRookie]

Circulation cut my heat up time by a lot. The sump pump is way too powerful for this use but it showed that the unit will heat the water to 148 in less than 4 hours. It was already to temp when i got back to the house from a run to the store so i'm not sure exactly how long it took but it was quite a bit less than the original test. I'm going to buy a small pond pump and rig it to the extension cord so the pump will always run even if the thermostat shuts off. If the pump will sustain operation in 150 degree water I think the build will be a raging success. Testing now to see if the water temp can hold with the lid off.

Cheers.

 

[birds4kids]

Pump might help efficiency by letting the element heat cooler water rather than heating hot water too much.

 

[CommonRookie]

Week 3 is here and the birds are doing really well. We lost one bird yesterday to unexplained circumstances. He couldn't stand and was very weak and was clearly sick or injured. I removed him from the pen and he died a few hours later. Other than that, the rest are lively and feeding well.

At 3 weeks they are too big to fit them all in the brooder so we turned them out to the chicken yard a bit earlier than last year. They went right to foraging and in the absence of the feeders will hunt and scratch like any chicken. We are keeping an eye on the weather but as long as it stays above 45˚ at night I'm going to avoid trying to put 125 birds back in the brooder. It's attached to the chicken yard but they aren't trained to find it at night and it's a big rodeo to get them all back in if necessary.

I removed their water for increasing lengths of time over 3 days to transition them to chicken nipple drinkers. I feed these drinkers with a 55 gallon drum which virtually eliminates my watering time. I just have to fill it up the drum occasionally. It's tough to tell how much they are drinking but I am guessing about 10 gallons per day.

We have a mystery bird in the flock. It's a fraction of the size of the rest and is more feathered out. It's pure white. I'll post a pic if I can catch it later.

We're going through a little less than 30 lbs of food per day now so the flock is eating $9/day. I'm really quite surprised how much i am noticing the financial impact this year versus last.

My first round of food was 12 x 50 lb bags for $180 which should get me to 4 weeks old. The next 5 weeks are going to be really expensive. I'm going to need 40 more bags of food. SOOOOO, I'm thinking about moving my butcher date up a week. It's currently slated for may 14th but the birds are growing faster than last year's flock and they are all cockerels so I think I may try to butcher on the 7th which will save me $150 and still give me very large birds. Fingers crossed that the chicken plucker is available!

 

[blucoondawg]

You may have a few more loses my advice is if they get to that condition just cull them and put them out of their misery, separating them and trying to keep them going is pointless they will likely still die and even if they live they will be miserable animals and won't produce a decent carcass

 

[CommonRookie]

Agreed. The only instrument a chicken doctor needs is a hammer. Seems like any time they are acting strange it's too late.

I pulled him so i could see if he pooped blood. Thought I might have to treat for Cocci. I've seen some red poop the last couple of days but it's not blood so i think all is well but I'm watching closely. Unfortunately, he had an empty crop and didn't poop before he died so it'll remain a mystery.

This is an awesome reference BTW:
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=17568.0

 

[2oldnow]

Our local Runnings farm store had a sale on CX chics yesterday @ $1.19. They get their birds from Hoover.
I bought ten. A friend works there and he hand picked out my birds. It was cold last night. Only 19 degrees.
My chicks were OK under the heat lamp. I gave them some warm water which they eagerly consumed.

Question: I plan to feed them only chick starter feed and water with electrolyte. I expect it'll take a bit longer
till butchering time with a lower % of protein feed. Is that correct ?

 

[blucoondawg]

It should take a little longer with lower protein but I wouldn't think more than a week or 2 depending on what size your looking to get them of course.

 

[CommonRookie]

I grew mine out on 18% protein last year and decided to spend a little more money on feed and get 20% this year. Chick starter is usually 20-21% by most of the big manufacturers. Some local mills try to run in down under 20% to make the feed cheaper. What % did you get? I'd be surprised if made a noticeable difference really.

It really depends on how big you want them. I've got some 4 week olds that could make a meal already. Last year I killed the boys at 9 weeks and the hens at 10 or 11 weeks. The cockerels were huge though. I used a milk jug as a kill cone and i had a hard time getting them to fit in it.

I'm killing at 8 weeks this year and bought all cockerels so i can harvest in one shot.

 

[blucoondawg]

I'd think the 4 week old chicks are likely comparable to a Cornish game hen in the store if not slightly larger already?
The fleet farm here sells 16%layer, 18% flock raiser and chick starter, and 21% meat maker feed all are crumble except flock raiser that is pellet. I have generally feed the 21%to my meat birds. Though I have feeder pigs now and discovered a feed mill where I get my pig feed also has reasonable price chicken feed the layer is 8 something a 50lb bag, it's more of a mash feed as it's his own custom grind though he does offer a slightly more coarse grind for a dollar more, I'm gonna check on his broiler feed pricing next time I get pig food

 

[CommonRookie]

Seems to be whatever they want to put on the bag. All the starter/grower mixes down here are over 20% unless you buy the cheap stuff, which i did last year. It was $11 bag for 18% starter grower. I paid $15/bag for 20% this year. I'm about to buy 30 more bags this week so i'm going to a different feed store who offered a discount if i pay cash. We'll see how much of a discount that ends up being.