Hello All, I raised a couple of 25 bird batches of Freedom Rangers last year. I didn't calculate the the costs, chalked it up to part of my education. I've already ordered 25 more for March. I raised them in a tractor on pasture after coming out of the brooder box. The first batch we butchered at 12 weeks because we had a tough time getting it organized. The birds were huge, 12 weeks was too long. Second batch I divided doing the biggest birds at 10 and the remainder at 11 weeks, still large but had less fat.
I used a 10 x10 tractor made of metal studs, wrapped in chicken wire, wood skids, aviary netting and zip tied tarp on top and one side. Based roughly on the Polyface Farm chicken tractors (I think they do 50 birds in a 12 x 10), but mine has a gable top. Tractor is very light I move it easily around the pasture (initially it was too light had to add the wood skids to keep the aircraft grounded in wind storms). I move the tractor daily, somtimes twice a day in the end. My birds would go out to the tractor at about 3 weeks. They share the pasture with our older mare...she likes the company.
The metal stud idea was an experiment, thought it would be easy to move around yet had good "structure". It works great, probably too expensive (about $125 for the whole thing). My next venture is turkeys in a tractor...I'm going to try metal electrical conduit, should give me strength, light weight and is very inexpensive. (But, the stud tractor will be my meatbird mainstay for a while and is being readied for a third batch.)
For our first butchering we had me, my wife, and two adult children, and two friends for help. We learned as we went, but it was a long day. At the end of the day my wife said "let's not do this again". But that evening after eating chicken parmesan my daughter made with a fresh chicken, she said "we need to be better organized next time." One taste and she flipped from never again to planning the next time. For the next time, I built a rotating drum plucker using plucker fingers, a salvaged a/c blower motor, a belt and pulleys. I butchered all the birds myself on two Saturday mornings, Had processing down to about 20 minutes per bird from coop to cooler.
Now that I have a system, this year I'm tracking costs. 50 Freedom Rangers a year seems about right for us, scheduled so brooding and butchering are in mild parts of the year. Now I just have to work in them turkeys!
I used a 10 x10 tractor made of metal studs, wrapped in chicken wire, wood skids, aviary netting and zip tied tarp on top and one side. Based roughly on the Polyface Farm chicken tractors (I think they do 50 birds in a 12 x 10), but mine has a gable top. Tractor is very light I move it easily around the pasture (initially it was too light had to add the wood skids to keep the aircraft grounded in wind storms). I move the tractor daily, somtimes twice a day in the end. My birds would go out to the tractor at about 3 weeks. They share the pasture with our older mare...she likes the company.
The metal stud idea was an experiment, thought it would be easy to move around yet had good "structure". It works great, probably too expensive (about $125 for the whole thing). My next venture is turkeys in a tractor...I'm going to try metal electrical conduit, should give me strength, light weight and is very inexpensive. (But, the stud tractor will be my meatbird mainstay for a while and is being readied for a third batch.)
For our first butchering we had me, my wife, and two adult children, and two friends for help. We learned as we went, but it was a long day. At the end of the day my wife said "let's not do this again". But that evening after eating chicken parmesan my daughter made with a fresh chicken, she said "we need to be better organized next time." One taste and she flipped from never again to planning the next time. For the next time, I built a rotating drum plucker using plucker fingers, a salvaged a/c blower motor, a belt and pulleys. I butchered all the birds myself on two Saturday mornings, Had processing down to about 20 minutes per bird from coop to cooler.
Now that I have a system, this year I'm tracking costs. 50 Freedom Rangers a year seems about right for us, scheduled so brooding and butchering are in mild parts of the year. Now I just have to work in them turkeys!
