Day 17 - cornish x (pics)

[erinszoo]

Well, the meaties are now all over a pound in weight on day 17. They are starting to get more feathers but are still ugly. Pooing is either not as bad as it was or we've just gotten used to the extraordinary amount of it. They now have their light off for two hours a day and we are limiting food to day time only. We take it away around 8:30pm and refill the next morning by 7:00am. I threw in a pic of one of the meaties in the brooder with the eggies just for comparison since they are all the same age. Our eggies weigh between 5 and 7 oz now.

Here's the meaties at day 17. Took this before we weighed them.

The one in front is the meatie and the others are all egg layers.

Here's the kids eating like the pigs they are ...

 

[victor1800]

these are some nice birds . How young do you take them from broooder lamp? and how cold does it get where you are at night do they have heat?

 

[hydroswiftrob]

Keep us updated!

 

[CrestedGirl]

 

[erinszoo]

Quote:
Our brooder is actually a shelf in one end of the chicken coop. We start with it lined with cardboard, wood shavings, and hay and keep the light on 24/7 at the lowest level for the first week. Week two we moved the light up but still left it on 24 hours and expanded the space by opening up the box and allowing the birds access to the window end of their shelf. This week, we started turning off the light for two hours from about 4 -6 pm when it's hottest outside. This week was in the 90's by that time of day. They do have their heat/light on all night because it does get down to the 60's at night.

Today we opened up the rest of the brooder shelf so they have the whole shelf which is 16 sq feet. Two sides are solid, one end is solid with a window in it and the other end is a panel of hardware cloth that is open to the coop itself. The whole coop is 4 x 22.

It has been raining almost all day today and hasn't gotten over 65 so we didn't turn out their light today and they've huddled together a lot more than normal.