We raised layers when I was growing up but this will be my first year raising meat birds so I'm pretty clueless. I'd appreciate any help! We are fortunate to live in the town where McMurray Hatchery is located. So we will be starting out buying 25 chicks called the "meat & egg combo", including 15 either Cornish roasters or Cornish X Rocks with 10 female chicks that are brown egg or rainbow egg layers. We want to try our hand at processing a few chickens for the freezer and keep a few hens for eggs so I thought this would be the way to go. I realize the meaties grow very quickly, need different food & supplements so I'm assuming they need to be raised separately from the other chicks? Any tips for how to do this? Thanks so much in advance for reading & your help! Erin
Im pretty new to chickens my self. But this year I raised 10 cornish rocks with 7 Isa browns. Same age. The rocks grew 3 times as fast as the Isa browns. Ate alot more food. I didnt have any problems. & the rocks are going in the freezer this week. The only thing I had to adjust was the feeding. The rocks would go crazy when the seen me coming with the feed. So I had to use 2 different feeders. or the Isa browns would get trampled.. Next batch of meaties may go into a seperate coop & run. Just becuase my coop needs to be bigger. So I may just do another small one.
I had 16 layers and 10 CX in the same run without issues. The ram was steep enough though that the CX didn't head up into the coop and I provided them with rubbermaid totes to sleep in.
Same ratio as Dogfish , but no ramp to climb . I do have to have extra feeder space as the meaties will walk on others when hungry ; but they're not bullies , just run over anything between the feed and themselves . I thought I could set up a divider wall at about the CX head level that the flighty ones could go over and leave the CX back on a controlled diet . With an empty crop the CX were motivated to beat their wings enough to get to the other side and I'm afraid to raise it higher and have the CX injure a leg ; the plan failed .
Thanks for the advice! It's nice to know I can put them together. I'll make sure to have 2 separate feeders.
I have 4 laying hens that I keep separate from my CornishX and baby chicks. I tried to put the meat birds with my layers at first but the layers were MEAN to the meaties. But, I have the meat birds in the same area as 6 young egger chicks and they are all fine together. They are approximately the same age (8-9 weeks) but obviously a different size. It's so funny to see the meat birds try to run and jump like the little chicks. Fun stuff!
We raised 2 ducks, 4 layers, and 2 meaties together in the same brooder for awhile. Yeah the CX can fly a little until they are a couple weeks old. You should be fine to brood them all together as long as you have enough food & water and you get them at the same time. I would probably seperate them around 4 weeks though. There is a huge size difference then and the meaties are much more messy.
