Just wanted to report what happened on our first meat bird experiment. We got 30 one day old chicks and started our journey. I thought it was ambitious for our first time, but said why not...
We put the chicks in boxes with wood shavings under heat lamps indoors. At two weeks they went outside to the coop with heat lamps also. At about 3.5 weeks, we put them in our pasture with our two goats (Conway and Loretta). They seemed to like it out there and roamed pretty well. We did not do the 12 on 12 off free choice feed, but kept them fed pretty regularly throughout the day with 20% Kalmback feed.
At about 7 weeks one developed a limp, so he was the first to get processed. This was also my first attempt at processing chickens, although I have a lot of experience processing various types of game.
We miscalculated the age of our birds and were planning on having them processed at 8 weeks, so basically, at 6 weeks they were really 8 weeks. Once we figured this out, we tried to arrange processing, but they were all 2 weeks back logged, so I took the challenge to do all 27 (Oh I did cull one of the birds who had a huge crop and body was very skinny.)
We just finished vacuum selaing today and out of 30 birds, we have 28 in the freezer. The average weight was about 6 lbs dressed.
All in all, I think it was a good experience and we have a lot of good quality, pastured chicken in the freezer. I think we're going to do another 30-50 in a couple months. I may invest in a plucker though. haha
I wish I had kept better reords of exactly how much feed, weights at verious ages, etc. So i could know what to do the same or different.
We put the chicks in boxes with wood shavings under heat lamps indoors. At two weeks they went outside to the coop with heat lamps also. At about 3.5 weeks, we put them in our pasture with our two goats (Conway and Loretta). They seemed to like it out there and roamed pretty well. We did not do the 12 on 12 off free choice feed, but kept them fed pretty regularly throughout the day with 20% Kalmback feed.
At about 7 weeks one developed a limp, so he was the first to get processed. This was also my first attempt at processing chickens, although I have a lot of experience processing various types of game.
We miscalculated the age of our birds and were planning on having them processed at 8 weeks, so basically, at 6 weeks they were really 8 weeks. Once we figured this out, we tried to arrange processing, but they were all 2 weeks back logged, so I took the challenge to do all 27 (Oh I did cull one of the birds who had a huge crop and body was very skinny.)
We just finished vacuum selaing today and out of 30 birds, we have 28 in the freezer. The average weight was about 6 lbs dressed.
All in all, I think it was a good experience and we have a lot of good quality, pastured chicken in the freezer. I think we're going to do another 30-50 in a couple months. I may invest in a plucker though. haha
I wish I had kept better reords of exactly how much feed, weights at verious ages, etc. So i could know what to do the same or different.
