First round of meaties for year

[Winsor Woods]

It's finally that time of the year again. Last year I raised 24 cornish x's. I let them go 10 weeks and had monsters to put in the freezer. This year, we want more! I'm starting with 33 peeps for my first round. I had trouble getting them all from the same batch though. My local ranch store uses Ideal Hatchery and can't seem to get that many cornish x's. The explanation I got was that the economy is so bad that there's a huge demand for peeps nationwide. So I got 13 last friday, and 20 today from another store that uses a hatchery out of ID.

It's amazing to see just how much bigger the 13 are even though they only had 5 days head start. They're almost double the size of my day olds.

Dan

 

[slceroc]

Good for you, congratulations. I was just doing the math tonight for my 9 six week old crosses. Can't imagine why with $1hamburgers out there people would turn to these eating machines to save money. Doesn't seem like an economical bargain or easy proposition raising these things in the least. Mine even peep and complain now when they get their midday cheap snack(corn or wheat). "Where's our $14 mash! where's our $14 mash!"
Sure is fun though.

 

[jaku]

Sounds kinda strange. Raising Cornish X's costs MORE than buying from the store- unless maybe if people are just feeding them straight cracked corn or something. Ordering direct from the hatchery might be a better idea. I got 75 a couple of weeks ago without a problem.

 

[Winsor Woods]

For us it's more about knowing where our food came from, what feed it was raised on, and giving the animals a dignified life. I learned a lot from reading Michael Pollan's "omnivore's dilemma." Just remember that there's a HUGE difference between supermarket chicken and home grown chicken. Industrial Ag suppliers raise the chickens as cheaply as possible. How they are raised and what feed they're given has an impact on the nutrition in the end result. I'll never go back to eating supermarket chicken. They taste like cardboard for one thing, but I also feel a difference between eating my own chickens versus supermarket.

Raise your little guys up and enjoy eating them. Don't make your decision entirely based on price per pound because that's comparing apples and oranges.

Dan

 

[terri9630]

We've had problems getting chicks here too. I didn't want 25 so the guy at the feed store ordered them for me and it took him 3 weeks to get them in. He said the hatchery said they were back ordered.

 

[Kim_NC]

We have 100 CX shipping from Mt Healthy on Monday. We also raise our own beef and pork. My parents raise elk. We have a pond and eat our own bass, crappies. We go to the coast to buy fresh seafood and freeze it.

We will never again eat supermarket meat or $1 hamburgers, etc. The stuff really isn't safe - full of GMO corn/soy, from filthy CAFOs, mass produced, poor nutrition. I am not putting that stuff into my body - it's the only body I have ya know!

It is not cheap food. In the long run it's very expensive because of the health problems it causes.
New statistics show that 1 of 3 Americans born after 2000 will develop diabetes. Although some of that is due to sugar and frucrose consumption in processed foods, the meat supply is a contributor.