I think it was between 7.5 to 10 lbs, depending on gender, health (leg health mainly), setup, and how greedy they were with the food. For a 4-5 lb bird, I would suggest growing them to six weeks (for males) and seven weeks on females. With all males, something to keep in consideration, is some may get pushed away from the feeder more (straight run meatbirds or females are actually better to raise than all males), so there could be some smaller. Also, with my birds, I kept them in a coop majority life with multiple feeders that they could sit in and waterers nearby. I was minimizing their need to exercise much, so my birds were porking out a lot from that. (In my setup my birds did get to free range every morning while I cleaned out their coops. They're messy birds, so with my setup, keeping them and the coops clean was nearly impossible, even with the everyday clean out.) If you're wanting fat, raise your birds in the fall. They'll be more fattier because they'll be packing it on for the winter.What was the ave dressed weight for your 8 weekers?
My fam is just me and hubs- one kid at home but is a vegetarian- (it’s meat texture thing). Reading from above I’m thinking a 4-5 lb dressed wt is ideal, but I don’t want to sacrifice flavor or that precious fat. I have 30 males. thoughts?