How much food???

[Northern.Ontario]

The key to successfully raising CX is to restrict their feed intake after 2 or 3 weeks. Some people only feed them for 12 hours on then 12 hours off. Some give them all they can eat in 20 minutes or an hour, twice a day. I will probably do something in between when my 100 CX 's from Freys arrive on May 9th.

 

[Minky]

They will still require a morning and evening feeding. The bigger they get, the more they consume. I wouldn't expect a pasture diet to sustain them unless you're knee deep in bugs. The 2:1 ratio is a good guideline. So if you want your 25 birds to reach 8lbs before processing, you'll need 400 lbs of feed or 7 to 8 bags. I would do 3 starter bags (18 to 20% protein) and 5 grower bags (17%)

Good lord. my organic feed is $40 a bag. if your calculations are correct that will be $300 in food for 25 birds that cost me $75. So without housing or electricity costs, $15 a bird to raise!! LOL

 

[featherhead007]

one thing I like about Walmart, they stock dried meal worms just for me and two other chicken owners!.... Small town

 

[Northern.Ontario]

Good lord. my organic feed is $40 a bag. if your calculations are correct that will be $300 in food for 25 birds that cost me $75. So without housing or electricity costs, $15 a bird to raise!! LOL

Well there's no such thing as cheap organic feed. That's why I'm not going the "organic" route. My starter feed and grower feed is $15 a bag. Organic is more than double that. The chicken won't taste any different and I don't plan on selling them. If I lived near larger urban centres then maybe I could get suckers to pay $6 or $8 a pound. My operating costs are $3 a pound which is generally the sale price of chicken (boneless, skinless breast) in our grocery store

 

[Minky]

Oh, Im not selling them. But for me, if im not growing organic, then I might as well buy them at the store, no?

 

[Northern.Ontario]

People grow them on their own land because they want control and knowledge over what exactly is going into their chickens, how they are treated, handled and processed.

 

[Minky]

yes, I suppose thats true.... I never think about the horrid treatment of most chickens... good point.

 

[Northern.Ontario]

yes, I suppose thats true I suppose.. I never think about the horrid treatment of most chickens... good point.

I also like to know how much space each bird gets, they get lots of fresh air, pasture and sun

 

[BillW77]

I raised 50 cornish cross chickens last year for 8 weeks and they consumed about 3lbs of food for every pound of chicken. So the 250 lbs of chicken took 750 lbs of chicken feed and they were on pasture in chicken tractor from for July and August.

 

[Borgia]

So based on the two replies regarding the lbs of feed per bird it looks like each bird would consume roughly 15-16 lbs in it's lifetime. $40 for organic seems high, I live in NY and can find it for $23. Maybe it's tax or things are just more expensive there. You guys need to pay for all those fancy govt programs you have Have you looked into mixing your own feed at all? There are a lot of youtube videos, etc on this? Some of the recipes look very complex, while others are simple but most claim they can get that cost down to roughly $15-16. I'm going to try one (because it's simple) that is basically 1 part wheat ($17 by me), 1 part cracked corn ($11 by me) and 1 part soy meal ($22 by me). It's about $16-$17/50lbs. The corn and wheat are organic. I'm also raising 6 peking ducks and after about 2 weeks they are about 3 times the size of the cornish ones.