- Apr 17, 2011
- 134
- 1
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Having great success raising Brahma's, Silkies, and other bantams as day-old chicks, so I thought I'd try my hand at a few meat chickens. FIL volunteered to help me when "harvest" day came, so off to TSC I went. Figured 25 was a good number.
They had 14 left the day I arrived, already feathering out nicely so definitely not brand-new chicks. While loading them into the box, more arrived! I decided to just take the 25 new chicks that arrived and put the older 14 back, however the salesman offered to give me the older 14 for $1 each if I took them too. After negotiating, I got all 39 for $1 each! Great deal, right? So now I have 39 rapidly growing chicks and am amazed at how different they are from my other chickens.
The Cornish Rocks are flighty, stinky, and seem to have half a brain in their heads. No interest in me beyond giving them feed and water (which is fine - they are to be meat birds after all). They ingest an immense amount of food and water and create an amazing amount of waste. Their behavior is even entirely different from the other chickens. They are now separated into 2 brooders and it's still hard to keep up with them. It feels like I'm raising an entirely different species, not just a different breed of chicken. Anyone else feel this way?
And I'm surprised to find that I'll be relieved when "harvest" day comes. Odd.
They had 14 left the day I arrived, already feathering out nicely so definitely not brand-new chicks. While loading them into the box, more arrived! I decided to just take the 25 new chicks that arrived and put the older 14 back, however the salesman offered to give me the older 14 for $1 each if I took them too. After negotiating, I got all 39 for $1 each! Great deal, right? So now I have 39 rapidly growing chicks and am amazed at how different they are from my other chickens.
The Cornish Rocks are flighty, stinky, and seem to have half a brain in their heads. No interest in me beyond giving them feed and water (which is fine - they are to be meat birds after all). They ingest an immense amount of food and water and create an amazing amount of waste. Their behavior is even entirely different from the other chickens. They are now separated into 2 brooders and it's still hard to keep up with them. It feels like I'm raising an entirely different species, not just a different breed of chicken. Anyone else feel this way?
And I'm surprised to find that I'll be relieved when "harvest" day comes. Odd.