How long and how much starter feed for Broilers?

[Tnic]

I'm sure this is covered multiple times here, but my search skills are very basic at best so....

I'm planning to run some pastured broilers (CornishX) this summer, but want to know;

1) How much starter feed per bird? ( I read somewhere they'll consume 17-18 lbs of all feed each over their life)

2) How long to keep em on starter feed? I saw 8 weeks somewhere, but they should be close to processing weight by then.

Thanks for your patience and advise
Tim

 

[FunClucks]

Pasturing CX can require a lot of work to keep them healthy and alive depending on your setup. They would prefer to sit right next to both their feeder and waterer, and eat while lying on the ground and never get up. Are you planning to put them in a tractor or free range?

Whenever I do CX I follow the guidelines given on Welp hatchery's website. Works well for me. I keep mine in a 150 sq ft covered run with the water on one end and the food on the other.

 

[Tnic]

Pasturing CX can require a lot of work to keep them healthy and alive depending on your setup. They would prefer to sit right next to both their feeder and waterer, and eat while lying on the ground and never get up. Are you planning to put them in a tractor or free range?

Whenever I do CX I follow the guidelines given on Welp hatchery's website. Works well for me. I keep mine in a 150 sq ft covered run with the water on one end and the food on the other.

Yes, they're like little piggies with no "I'm full" switch. I gather the 12 on 12 off feeding schedule seems to be the popular option. These will be on grass in a hoop house/tractor. I'm thinking of an 8x12 cattle panel high tunnel that will double as a cold frame/greenhouse until the dinos are ready for the great outdoors.
We're starting small, no more than 50 to see how we do with em. We have about 7 acres of reclaimed hay field on a dirt road in central Maine and plenty of high velocity predator abatement equipment.
Oh and we're retired so will be there to manage things. Our food will have a good life and only one bad day.

 

[FunClucks]

Yes, they're like little piggies with no "I'm full" switch. I gather the 12 on 12 off feeding schedule seems to be the popular option. These will be on grass in a hoop house/tractor. I'm thinking of an 8x12 cattle panel high tunnel that will double as a cold frame/greenhouse until the dinos are ready for the great outdoors.
We're starting small, no more than 50 to see how we do with em. We have about 7 acres of reclaimed hay field on a dirt road in central Maine and plenty of high velocity predator abatement equipment.
Oh and we're retired so will be there to manage things. Our food will have a good life and only one bad day.

That sounds awesome! As long as you have more than one person to manage it all, should go great! Before you start, plan how you will process them - 50 CX is a lot to do right at 8 wks unless you have a good plan. With just me, processing 21 CX by myself after work a few times during the week and on Saturdays, by hand, I had to start at 5 weeks, and it took me until 9 wks to complete them all. I plucked the first 6-7 birds (the 5-6 wk birds) for roasting and then skinned the rest (it was faster with less yucky scalding water to manage) and parted them out (they were too big to roast and have the breast and thighs/legs cook to done-ness at the same time). So I have a lot of skinless bone-in chicken thighs/legs/wings and lots of nice boneless breasts and tenders. One full 8 wk CX parted chicken will feed a family of 5 for 2-3 meals. Having a good processing setup, more than one person willing to help, and lots of time back-to-back would speed things up considerably. Also make sure you have a good place to store them. My old upright died, and we tried to use a new upright freezer, and it bowed in the middle (!!!). Never again. Chest freezers only for us going forward.

If it gets very dark at night where you live, they'll stop eating then. If that's approximately 12 hrs darkness you won't have to pull the food. But if you go out there with a headlamp or flashlight to do stuff in or around the tractor, they'll start eating again because they can see.

There's a cool tractor build or two on this site that show how to do a hardware cloth apron on a moveable tractor. Might be worth checking out, depending on what kind of predators you have in your area - unfortunately not everything can be prevented/deterred by high velocity predator protection. And don't forget to strengthen the top to account for snow load when you build your coop. Just in case you want it to last more than one season, or for random unexpected snow events.

Since you're doing 50 CX, I'd also strongly recommend making more than one hoop coop and splitting your flock in half if you're going to be using 8'x12' coops. I gave my birds 6 sq ft per bird, and had to turn the litter every day or two max in a fixed covered run. For a mobile tractor, I think the general recommendation is at least 4 sq ft per bird, and you will have to move it daily due to poop, or there will be a nasty mess. CX are sensitive to cold and prone to pneumonia if they get too chilled, so it's a balance between getting them enough protection from drafts and allowing air circulation to prevent frostbite.

Also, they can NOT get wet/rained on, or stand in water for any length of time (because they are dumb and will lay down in it) - if you don't immediately dry them, they can easily catch hypothermia or pneumonia and die (really, any chicken will get hypothermic if they're drenched in a flood or something, but CX are less resilient than eggers). I always kept mine covered so they were never rained on, and we had good drainage with 4-6" of wood mulch from a tree service as coop bedding, but be aware of drainage on your land, so if there is lots of rain, it doesn't build up where your birds will be, or doesn't blow directly onto your birds.

There was an unexpected flood on my land in the middle of June last year (warm weather), and in 2 of my 3 coops the chickens were swimming. Some of them made it onto the perches, but we had about 25 chickens that had to be fished out of the water, taken inside the house, and put in my bathroom/bathtub, have the dirt rinsed out of their feathers, and dried with towels and a hair dryer. That took a while, and all the family members I had and all the towels in my house. I was very grateful to have a working hair dryer and enough space in my bathroom - I'd have lost several to (EDIT: hypothermia, not frostbite) frostbite if we hadn't been able to hair dry them fast enough. It's an unlikely scenario, but it's worth at least thinking about how quickly you'd be able to get them dry, if they do get wet.

 

[Tnic]

WOW! There's a ton of info there FC. And THANKS for that, lots to ponder.
There won't be any litter turning once they're out on pasture, they'll be moved daily maybe twice depending on their output. Part of my continuing pasture/hay field improvement plan. At 2 sq/ft per bird the 8x12 comes to 47 birds and with diligent methods I feel good about running 50. Joel Salatin runs 75 in his 10x12s , which should only have 60 according to convention.

I don't know for sure how many birds we'll run this first go. It depends on if a few friends want to get in on the action there. As long as production costs are covered I'm good with doing the work. Any friends that want birds will need to be on hand for processing. I'll farm em, but the owners need to help out with the final destination or pay more. My bride and I can mange our own birds, but I like the skinning idea too as I already plan to part out a bunch of em. We have 2 small chest freezers and will get a larger one if needed.

So far locally procured organic/non gmo feed is going to put us at around $10 per bird, still researching that.

There are several cattle panel tractor ideas on YT and I'm handy with tools (I hand built, wired and plumbed the cabin we're moving into) so that's a non issue and my 35HP LS tractor will handle the heavy lifting as well as mowing ahead of the birds as needed. I'll have tarps to cover the tractor, so our food will be protected from the elements and YES, I was thinking of an antidigger apron too. Our worst enemy will likely be coons and opossums as well as coyotes. There'll be motion activated lights and noise makers for those bump in the nighters and failing that, high velocity lead poisoning will do the job.

Our first run will have them high and dry, actually moving them around the kitchen garden area this year. If all goes well I'll run them through my back meadow next year to improve the grass for mulch hay.

For now we're just watching 14"+ of snow melt and dreaming about fresh air on our land with nothing but the beeze, birds and a neighbor's roosters (and Guineas) for noises.

 

[FunClucks]

WOW! There's a ton of info there FC. And THANKS for that, lots to ponder.
There won't be any litter turning once they're out on pasture, they'll be moved daily maybe twice depending on their output. Part of my continuing pasture/hay field improvement plan. At 2 sq/ft per bird the 8x12 comes to 47 birds and with diligent methods I feel good about running 50. Joel Salatin runs 75 in his 10x12s , which should only have 60 according to convention.

I don't know for sure how many birds we'll run this first go. It depends on if a few friends want to get in on the action there. As long as production costs are covered I'm good with doing the work. Any friends that want birds will need to be on hand for processing. I'll farm em, but the owners need to help out with the final destination or pay more. My bride and I can mange our own birds, but I like the skinning idea too as I already plan to part out a bunch of em. We have 2 small chest freezers and will get a larger one if needed.

So far locally procured organic/non gmo feed is going to put us at around $10 per bird, still researching that.

There are several cattle panel tractor ideas on YT and I'm handy with tools (I hand built, wired and plumbed the cabin we're moving into) so that's a non issue and my 35HP LS tractor will handle the heavy lifting as well as mowing ahead of the birds as needed. I'll have tarps to cover the tractor, so our food will be protected from the elements and YES, I was thinking of an antidigger apron too. Our worst enemy will likely be coons and opossums as well as coyotes. There'll be motion activated lights and noise makers for those bump in the nighters and failing that, high velocity lead poisoning will do the job.

Our first run will have them high and dry, actually moving them around the kitchen garden area this year. If all goes well I'll run them through my back meadow next year to improve the grass for mulch hay.

For now we're just watching 14"+ of snow melt and dreaming about fresh air on our land with nothing but the beeze, birds and a neighbor's roosters (and Guineas) for noises.

That sounds dreamy, all that nice land and a cabin to boot!!! I'm totally jealous!

We have raccoons, foxes, cats, possums, and my apron works great.

I had totally planned for my husband to help me process the chickens, and for my kids to help, and none of that happened. My husband was not around at all, and my kids made everything take twice as long (I love them, but can only do that so many times, so I taught them once or twice and left it at that). Always have a backup plan for processing if your original plan falls through.

If you're committed to moving them twice a day, you'll probably be fine with the poo, and it will be good for the birds to get exercise. It's unreal how much poo they make! Salatin is an expert, so what he says I'm sure will work. I like more space, because I'm in there a fair bit as well doing chores and don't want to step on chickens, and for poop load due to being stationary.

One warning for tight quarters - if you pull feed and reintroduce in the morning they will mob the feeder. I was using a round 25 lb gravity feeder in my brooder, and at 3-4 wks they were slicing through each others' rear skin to the muscle trying to climb over each other to get to the feed in the morning. I had to introduce a long chick trough feeder on one end of the brooder, and while they were stampeding that way I'd introduce the 25 lb round feeder on the other end, and pull the trough feeder after about 15 minutes or so, when morning rush had slowed down. I switched them over to the covered run, and a literal gutter feeder, so every bird had 1 ft of space and then some, and there were no more sliced up rear ends because they weren't competing so badly. Guess I'm trying to say, make sure every bird has a space at the feeder the size of their body width at all times, to avoid injury. They will not hang back and share like eggers will depending on pecking order. It's every chicken for their voracious self immediately.

They also don't get out of the way of anything. If you don't physically move them, it's easy to squish a chick with the food or water, depending on how it's mounted/hung. And once they get big, about 7-9 weeks, I'd have someone keep an eye on them as you move them with the tractor. If they get flipped on their backs, they may not be able to flip themselves back over. I had one get trapped on her back because she tripped on something and fell over trying to reach the water. Luckily I was there to rescue her or that would have been the end. Also research green muscle disease, and get them used to your tractor early, so they don't develop that as a result of hearing your tractor.

Not sure how you plan to water, but I used two 5 gallon buckets with 4 horizontal nipples each, and that was good for 21 CX. I'd fill it every other day, and in case of leaks, they had a backup water source. If you do those type waterers, put a vent hole so they can't form a vacuum seal and stop giving water. If you use the horizontal nipples on PVC pipe, make sure you have a way to clean things and introduce medicine like CORID into the water if needed.

Sounds like you are off to a great start! Have fun with it!!!

 

[Tnic]

I kinda like the John Suscovich trough feeder from a 4" pvc pipe and will be building a couple suspended 5gal bucket waterers with several nipples around each one. If they go through more than 5 gal a day then I'll hang a 2nd one, but one should do and I can just do a swap out each morning.

I won't pull the feeder, just make sure there's enough for the day and let them eat it. Of course I'll check on em to see if they need more in the afternoons, but its my understanding if you keep food in front of em, they'll keep eating like the little gluttons they are.

One thing I learned from helping a neighbor with their layers is get the food and water off the ground at least breast height. Way less mess to clean up. They were using bell types. They've stopped keeping chickens so I may have some items to scrounge from them, not to mention a coop full of compost we could use. Its cured by now.

 

[HenriettaPizzaNolan]

I've used Meyer Hatchery's guide to raising Cornish X in the past and have had a lot of success. https://meyerhatchery.zendesk.com/h...ers-101-How-to-raise-from-hatch-to-processing

With my current batch of CX though, I am using a very different feeding method. I used a 10 lb bag of starter feed to start them off, but since then I have been feeding homemade feed and scraps. It has been based on this BYC article. I've so far been feeding beans, rice, oats, barley, a 5-grain scratch mix, liquid whey, some veggie scraps, and cat food. So far so good, but we'll see what their weights are at 8 weeks when I usually process.

I would just follow that Meyer guide for your first time. It's easy and they don't say you need the really high protein feed, which is more expensive (and honestly makes the birds grow at an unnatural rate in my opinion). Higher protein for the first couple weeks, and then 18% from then on out, with a 12 hour feeding schedule. I still averaged 8 lbs dressed at 8 weeks with that feeding plan, and I didn't have to buy high protein feed the whole time.

 

[Tnic]

I've used Meyer Hatchery's guide to raising Cornish X in the past and have had a lot of success. https://meyerhatchery.zendesk.com/h...ers-101-How-to-raise-from-hatch-to-processing

With my current batch of CX though, I am using a very different feeding method. I used a 10 lb bag of starter feed to start them off, but since then I have been feeding homemade feed and scraps. It has been based on this BYC article. I've so far been feeding beans, rice, oats, barley, a 5-grain scratch mix, liquid whey, some veggie scraps, and cat food. So far so good, but we'll see what their weights are at 8 weeks when I usually process.

I would just follow that Meyer guide for your first time. It's easy and they don't say you need the really high protein feed, which is more expensive (and honestly makes the birds grow at an unnatural rate in my opinion). Higher protein for the first couple weeks, and then 18% from then on out, with a 12 hour feeding schedule. I still averaged 8 lbs dressed at 8 weeks with that feeding plan, and I didn't have to buy high protein feed the whole time.

Thank you for that link! That gives me pretty fair idea of my feed costs. I'll be going thru that info.