Got a strange call today and.....

[erthymom2]

A friend of my sons called and asked if I wanted a "big rooster" his grandma had. Said she got it in April and it's too big for her hens.
Since it sounded interesting, I told him to bring it over.
He came with a large box which was very heavy and no way was it a rooster hatched in April this year. I looked inside and it turned out that Grandma had gotten herself some Broiler birds in April, not white leghorns like she thought she was getting.
This roo was massive and heavy, had to be a 10 pounder. you could tell he was not going to last much longer. He was beutiful for a broiler, clean and bright red combs.
he called grandma and i explained to her what was coming with these birds...needless to say she was heartbroken. We resolved it by me having Jr. bring the six broilers to me and I gave her some Buff mixes and a roo mix I had and two Pekin baby ducks to help her over the loss of her babys.
Honestly - I don't know how these brutes made it this far along, but they sure are in great shape for the processor tomorrow!!

 

[Judy]

Fortunate for you, but sad for her. Sounds like you helped her to have as good an outcome as she could have hoped for, though; so much better than their dropping dead on her.

 

[gypsy2621]

I have seen some broilers who can go seemingly for ever with proper diet, the trick is not to feed them the grower feed they give to them to speed up growth. Technically you can slow down growth by feeding a regular chicken feed.
I bet 10 to 1 these were well taken care of and much loved birds to be so big and healthy.
The best part of Grand Mother having your babys is they are going to be well taken care of and you can rest assured they will have a wonderfull chicken life.

 

[erthymom2]

the pekin ducklings are very tame and just love attention so i thought they'd be good pets for her and the chickens will help her with what she wanted in the first place...eggs . She'll miss her babys i'm sure, but this way she's got something fuzzy to start raising to ease her sadness.

 

[monarc23]

awhh ya know I bet many people end up like that with broilers and wonder why one by one they start to die on them, and then probably assume it was something they did wrong kinda sad. A healthy cornish cross roo is a sight to behold! I have a pair from april as well and they are beautiful, they will be traded soon here with a friend of mine and then processed its a sad ending but they eat way too much to keep lol.