meat birds and egg birds

[krisjh]

Thanks in advance for your help. I am new to this forum and new to chickens. Does anyone know if it is alright to raise meat birds along with birds that will be for eggs? Everything that I have been reading says that you should start giving small sticks when they are a few weeks old but I've also read that meat birds should not have roosts. Why can't they have roosts?

 

[bluebirdfarm]

hi, the meat birds just stay on the floor , they grow so fast and usually do not perch due to their rapid growth and them being huge! they should be raised seperately from your egg layers for this reason , they will outgrow the others fast and it is not wise to have them in sma epen , you could maybe put a partition or move the eggers to another smaller bin. you will have to have more space soon for the meat ones , too.
and how many do you have ?i have 101 meats and 29 broen eggers /

 

[greyfields]

The meat birds will be double the size of the hens within two weeks; so you will have to expect trampling deaths amongst your hens. Also, under ideal circumnstances, the broilers should get a broiler starter/finisher and the hens a normal chick starter.

Excluding roosts is a way to help protect the legs of meat broilers. As they grow very heavy, very quickly, sometimes their legs just give out and they are unable to move. Hopping up and down off a roost worsens this.

If you can all do it, raise them separately. Then remember, a meat broiler may spend over half its life in the brooder. It's quite different from raising hens/pullets.

 

[krisjh]

Thanks for the reply. Didn't have time to get back on computer until now. (I have 3 teenagers so do get alot of computer time at home).
I have 28 meat birds and 12 layers, they are 2 weeks old. They are growing very fast, but the layers don't seem to have any trouble with them, they push right in to get food. The layers are just at tall as the meat birds just thinner. I am hoping to keep them together until they don't need the heat lamp. I am in central Wisconsin and the nights are still pretty cool. That should be okay shouldn't it?