Ordered 100 chicks! Few questions.

[Dogfish]

White color, except for the brown poo.

The different name could also be because of her location. Canadia.

Sounds like a good description of Cornish X

 

[jaku]

-I go nonmedicated. My thought is that if I didn't care about medicated birds, I'd save myself the time, money, and effort and just buy store birds.

-Every 25 birds will eat about 500 pounds of feed. You can save about 1/2 of your feed cost if you buy it ground custom at the mill, rather than buying prebagged feed. The catch is that you have to buy it usually 500 pounds at a time.

 

[Hillsvale]

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We have White Rock in Canada... we aren't that far off that our chickens have different names than those in the states... unless our poulet comes from Quebec!

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I was at the grocery store last night... a 6.5 pound roasting bird... 19.00

but worse yet... 4 boneless skinless boobs... 22.50

Obviously your poultry prices are way better than ours!... I did not buy chicken last night, no way I was paying those prices.

 

[Olive Hill]

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I would definitely secure some hardware cloth over those windows for when the chickens are in there and I think you're probably right, you'll want to move them out when they get most of their feathers -- if not for the space, for the ventilation. Meaties are messier than your layers or dual purpose. Remember, waste is a function of feed and they're going to be consuming a LOT of it.

FWIW, our year of terrible losses came many years into our poultry keeping endeavors when we were already experienced. Sometimes, even experience cannot protect you. In keeping living, breathing creatures intended for profit there is always risk that must be accepted. We live on a steep slope, our meaties were in a coop near the top of that hill. Never have we had anything flood here. Ever. Not prior to that and not since. The night it happened the weather called for "scattered t-storms" nothing more. We woke at 4 am to what sounded like the sky had opened up and was pouring the ocean over our house. There was just too much water too fast, everything, everywhere was filled with it.

IOW, refrain from thinking you have things figured out. As soon as you think it won't happen to you because you know what you're doing, it'll happen to you... probably because you know what you're doing.

 

[jaku]

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That is insane!! I think a roaster is about $5 here!

 

[tammyd57]

I haven't seen a good roaster in a grocery store around here for at least 10 years. Nothing but 'fryers' (bony, skinny things those are)
If I had more fenced area I would raise my own roasters. Next project!

 

[cluckcluck42]

Thanks everyone for your input! I am very excited to get those babies home.

I am so glad to hear it isnt a necessity to do medicated starter. I want things as natural as possible, I thought it was standard to give medicated feed to broilers- wonder where I got that idea from. My local feed store tells me everytime I come in asking for nonmedicated chick starter "Well, we might have one bag." Wonder if thats because they dont sell a lot of them and dont have a lot in stock OR if they are the first to go.

Chicken is pretty pricey here in Canadialand. A tiny itsy bitsy bird is at least 7 bucks, and chicken breasts? No way. I wait til they are on sale at M & M before we get any. A few small chicken breasts are always between 15-20 something bucks. It's crazy. They had Schneiders chicken breasts on sale at GT last week so we stocked up. Can't wait for our own birds! My hunny wants to butcher them ourselves, but my father says we probably wont be able to do it well enough to please our city slicker customers. How hard is it to do a good job cleaning meat birds???

I mean- we have the internet!!

Olive Hill- Sorry to hear about that, it sounds like a very freak occurence. You just cant escape that stuff sometimes, huh. Thanks for the advice, I know ventilation is going to be a big priority, I can only imagine how much poop we are going to be dealing with.

So does taking food off for 12 hours help prevent them from a lot of the deaths that happen with meat birds??

 

[Olive Hill]

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It's not hard, but with that many birds you're going to want to automate the plucking. Either buy a plucker or get plans for building your own tub-type.

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Yes, it's the whole point of doing it that way. Otherwise they'll eat themselves to death.

Interestingly, we've experimented with different ways of feeding over the years and the best way we found was actually 6-6-6-6 (6 hours on, 6 off, 6 on, 6 off). But even with 12-12 we never had any deaths from leg or heart problems.

 

[cluckcluck42]

Quote:
It's not hard, but with that many birds you're going to want to automate the plucking. Either buy a plucker or get plans for building your own tub-type.

Quote:
Yes, it's the whole point of doing it that way. Otherwise they'll eat themselves to death.

Interestingly, we've experimented with different ways of feeding over the years and the best way we found was actually 6-6-6-6 (6 hours on, 6 off, 6 on, 6 off). But even with 12-12 we never had any deaths from leg or heart problems.

Well we actually found a six dollar plucker online, it's a pvc cap with things poking out of it (cant remember what, the bookmark is at work) which attaches to a drill you tie to a table. Apparently it works really well and hey for 6 dollars we are going to try it out. We have two cockerals that are going to need to go soon so we will practice on them.

The 6 hour thing makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that!