Kosher Kings

[Oregon Blues]

$20 less feed. 10 ounces per chick for 50 chicks means 31 pounds of chicken less for the 75 pounds of less feed use. Not really a savings.

 

[Bucky182]

Oregon blues that is 75 lbs in the first 4-5 weeks of feed, also from personal experience the KK will dress out at 5 lbs at about 11 weeks old. (at least 5 lbs dressed) They are also .60 cents a chick verus the 1.25 - 1.50 per freedom ranger. So you could almost buy twice the KK for the price of 1/2 the Freedom Rangers then use the saved feed for the extra chicks have about the same money and have way more meat... I know I have raised both of them. Honestly did not see any differance in wieght at the end and did in price and health of the birds. The KK are much more active and much more free range type birds but also like I said dress out at 5+ lbs in 11-12 weeks. You can also get the red meat maker for the same money which is suppose to be bigger than the KK.

Before I paid that money for a FR I would buy a rosambro for less, which will dress out better than a FR in less time and have a much bigger breast and is white. The KK is a bird that will give you very similar performance to the FR at less money in cost and feed and has a superior taste.

 

[Pineywoods Peepers]

Actually the price I paid per chick was $1. With shipping the total cost for each bird was $1.51. My FR's cost $2/bird with shipping. We processed the FR's at 9.5 weeks. We probably won't be able to process these chicks til 11 or 12 weeks old. The 49 cents savings per chick won't make up for the difference in feed costs for those extra 2-3 weeks.

I really wanted to try the Rosambros from MT-DI, but after leaving 2 messages and not getting a call back, I called Noll's Poultry. I may try the Red Meat Makers from Noll's next time.

I did not weigh the chicks this weekend. We had company coming over Saturday, and it's rained all day today. But I did let them out to range yesterday for about an hour - something I never did with my FR's. They had a pretty good time. Getting them back in was kind of a chore! They're pretty fast for chunky legged little fowls!

 

[Pineywoods Peepers]

So I weighed the KK's today for the first time in 2.5 weeks. It's impossible to weigh them during the week because of the short length of daylight hours, and our weekends here lately are so busy that weighing meat chickens isn't a very high priority.

Here are this week's weights:

Hi - 67.9 ounces, Lo - 41.8 ounces, Avg 55.31 At 8.5 weeks our FR's averaged 76.8 ounces. However, by 8.5 weeks our FR's had consumed about 650 pounds of food while our KK's have only eaten 450 pounds of food. Overall the feed conversion of the KK's is 2.51 as compared to 2.71 for the FR's, so even though they're smaller, I'm still pleased with their growth.

And I can't blame the birds for slow growth. They haven't eaten as much food as the FR's did up to this point partially (I think) because the days are shorter, and they have fewer daylight hours in which to consume food, and because I haven't poured the food to them quite as heavily as I did the FR's. This weekend we finally got 2 PVC pipe feeders set up for them which holds about 10 3 qt scoops of feed as compared to the smaller feeders which only held about 3 qts of feed that we filled 2 times per day.

We also moved the KK's to our front yard to give them more room in which to range. Their old 10 X 20 pen just wasn't cutting it anymore. Plus it was really starting to smell. Now I just hope that the hawks don't carry them off. There is quite a bit of tree cover in the front yard, but I just lost a young Silkie last week, so I'm kinda nervous.

We have lost 2 KK's in the past week and a half. One I found in the coop just sitting around not moving, so I brought it in. I acted like it had some sort of leg issue, wouldn't eat, wouldn't drink, and it died less than 24 hours later. The other I found this morning dead in the coop by the feeder, being pecked over by his siblings. yuck! Our weather of late has been damp and chilly (40's - 50's for lows, some mid 30's.) so I don't know if that's what's attributing to these losses or not.

Here are some pics of them in their new "digs":

 

[kizanne]

thank you for the great updates. I have always wondered if you weren't in a terrible hurry did the longer birds actually cost more or just take more time. It looks like they would cost a little less. But I will keep watching for your continued updates.

 

[Ariel301]

Those are really good looking birds, they're not all disgusting like the white Cornish Cross. I'm interested in giving them a try. I can't remember, but I think I called Noll's at one point and they had no interest in shipping anything to Arizona...it may have been someone else but I think it was them.

 

[Pineywoods Peepers]

These guys came from Noll's. He didn't seem to have any trouble shipping them to Texas, and Arizona's only one state away. However, if the weather is colder, and now that US shipping times for first class mail will increase, it may be more of an issue to get him to ship further away.

 

[Bucky182]

Nice photos, They look good. Let us know thow they finish out. I noticed yours have more yellow legs than the ones I raised. Mine had alot of black on the legs?

 

[partsRheavy]

I'm following this with interest, as I am also in East Texas and am interested in meat birds but don't want to deal with the leg issues and other problems with CornishX. Sorry to hear that you lost one with leg issues. Was the other loss a "runt" by any chance?

I'm wondering if it's possible to do a meat project involving growing out Freedom Rangers or Kosher Kings past 26 weeks as capons or if would be a lot better to just stick with males from straight-run orders of large dual-purpose breeds for that? Still too many leg issues etc. with Freedom Rangers and Kosher Kings?

 

[Bucky182]

I have raised both and have had very few leg issues with the KK. Maybe one out of 100 or so. Which could have also been caused by getting hit with the chicken tractor. They are very healthy over all in my opinion.