Meat bird growth ?

[Richard]

well I weighed 10 of my meaties today 5 roosters and 5 hens they are heavier than I thought . I made a mistake in my earlier post by saying they would be 5 weeks old as of today they are 6 weeks old today I am sorry my bad . here are the weights I got using an electronic postal scale.
roosters 6.6,6.2,5.5,6.6,6.4 hens where as follows
5.1,4.9,5.1,5.3,5.7. So the average for my meaties would be about 5.74 pounds live weight .so the total live weight of the meaties is about 292.74 pounds as of today they they have eaten 550 pounds of feed so I have an FCR of 1.91 so far.I am paying 12.00 per bag so thats 132.00 so far . Each chick has cost 2.58 each so far in feed . I have used 8 bales of straw so far at 3 .00 each so that adds 2 cents per chick.I bought the chicks for 29.65 including the shipping( I ordered 25 but they sent me 51 at no extra cost ) so my cost was only 58 cents per chick .so the total cost so far is 3.18 per chick.Sorry for the long post but I am just trying to keep track of the cost

 

[SandraMort]

Richard - that's fabulous!!! I wouldn't even know how to figure out how much I've spent, since I've got different groups of birds at different ages. Next time, I should be so organized. Wish I could get 12 dollar feed, that's for SURE!

 

[quercus21]

Our figure for this year with the 1st batch of birds are:
10 50# feed -
1 20# feed

Feed Cost - $ 174.40
30 chicks - $71.70
Cost per bird at processing time: $8.20

Lost 1 bird to flipping

 

[wyliefarms]

For 4-H my daughters have to fill out a record book for their meat chickens.

So for 3 birds that weighed 15.5# live weight.

gained 15.5# (started at 0 beginning weight)
divided by
50 days on feed
= .31 average daily gain

$14.10 total feed cost
divided by
15.5 total lbs. of gain
= .91 cents per lb. of gain

50 lbs. of feed fed
divided by
15.5 total lbs. of gain
= 3.23 lbs of feed fed per lb. of gain.

Cost for 3 chicks is $3.78 and feed costs $14.10= $17.88 for 3 finished meat chickens.

We figure out the whole batch and then figure per bird then multiply by 3.
found out the feed had gone up since last year too! If I remember right it was .10 per lb.

We also mix our own special feed mix, so it costs a little less than commerical feed.

We sell our meat chickens too. I charge $3/lb. and they weigh 5# in the freezer. It costs $2/bird to process. I am making about $7 in profit per bird...not figuring in my daughters time and energy.

We sell enough that the ones we keep are paid for! Not too bad and the meat is great!!!

 

[chiknlady]

I have about 10 meaties left from my batch of 30 in August and the girls have started laying and the boys are mating and crowing! I processed one last week and he was 12.5 pounds. I brined him and he is in the freezer. I did not expect to have this many left--but I only process them as needed and because they are so big--I did not have freezer space to do them all at once...

I have placed some general eggs in my incubator to see what hatches out. I do not have anyone separated so it will be a mongrel flock--but it will be interesting to see if I can start my own this year rather than buying them from a hatchery...I know they will not breed true--but it will be interesting to see what I get...