how much for meaties?

[guccipoultry24]

So I am thinking of raising cornish x for the first time. Where is a good hatchery to buy them. Cheap also? How much feed can I expect to feed 25 birds? About how much are they gonna cost me in the end.

 

[Oregon Blues]

Rule of thumb for Cornish cross is that they will eat 17 pounds up until 8 weeks, when they can be butchered. You will have to do the math yourself.

Cost per chick varies by how many you buy and who you buy them from.

Processing costs depends upon whether you do them yourself or pay to have them done.

At 8 weeks on the dot, mine had finished off 17 pounds of 20% turkey feed, but I'd put 2 bags of meat bird crumbles through them when I first got them, so that was another 2 pounds of feed per bird. Then, I am running them on for another week and butchering at 9 weeks, so a couple more pounds of feed per bird. I'm looking at 21 pounds of feed per bird from start to finish.

It's cold here and I suspect that the birds were using some of that feed to keep warm instead of to grow. They look good, though: nice and big and fat.

 

[PlumpChicken]

I pay $1.56 per bird for Cx and I figure on feeding them 20 lbs of feed to get them to around 8 lbs per bird on average. I pay $12.50 per 50 lb bag of feed. Each bird will eat aprox. 20 lbs of feed so you take 20/50 = 0.4 x $12.50 = $5 in feed per bird. So if you have 25 birds x $5 = $125 in feed to get them to about 8 lbs. Your looking at about 500 lbs of feed total or 10 50 lb bags.

I hope this helps!

 

[kizanne]

I got my chicks from Whelp (when comparing price remember theirs includes shipping). Whelp also has a chart on their web site for weight and feed. They do close to that. Mine grew a little slower but I used lower protein food. They still finished out as monsters.

Cost is variable as said above. If you order 100 you can get them cheaper than if you order 25 (but who want to have 100 running around). And feed is your biggest expense, 17 to 20 pounds per bird if you let go. Mine did a small amount of foraging but they are pigs. Also depends on your feeder as you want to minimize waste.

If you are trying to pre price you'll need to look at bedding or are you tractoring? They poop like crazy. There are several threads devoted to raising and pricing. Average looks like $2 /lb. Mine came out about $3.50 / lb but that was organic feed and included some cost I won't incur again as they are reusable like waterers and feeders. Some get it smaller than this by supplementing food with stuff laying around or more foraging.

Then you have processing and storage. I've seen anywhere from $1 to 2.50 / bird here but I don't have a processor in the area so we had to do it ourselves. We didn't opt for any special equipment so other than the heavy duty freezer/ vacuum bags we used there was no cost.