About a month ago...in his bid to rid us of some of the excess BR pullets he had ordered...DH traded 5 of them for 8 RIR (? I think RIR - they LOOK like RIR) roos - with intentions of processing the roos of course when the time came. After several days of WAY too much rain, I still need to get out there and weigh them, so I am just guessing that the biggest three (there were 3 a little older than the other 5) are at about 7-8 lbs each now. Would an 8 lb bird dress out at least to 5 lbs? Would 7 lbs make it to 4 lbs on the table? Just trying to verify - I am great at doing research, but I suck at making sense of it! If so, then I shall write their dinner invite this week...if not...a few more weeks until we plan for that. I believe they are between 12 wks (smaller birds) and 16 weeks old (big ones).
5 of them are 12 weeks - ish (and still pretty little) and there are only 3 that are 16 weeks - ish THOSE three have gotten HUGE like over night! IDK if it's the bugs which we have a ton of right now or the pancake breakfasts or maybe they are crowding the smaller guys off of the feed- but they have SPROUTED like the weeds around here this last week or so - everything has really - even the pigs are packing on weight this week! Maybe because it's been cooler due to the rain so they haven't had any heat stress to over come while growing? IDK... Like I said, weight is a visual guess right now. In the morning I will drag out the scale and report back my findings. It JUST SEEMS like they are GINORMOUS! I'm just hoping to get about 4 pounds of bird on the beer can chicken thing at a time anyways - no high hopes of getting Godzilla birds - we already did that with Turkeys, and it was an experience to say the least. STILL have enough turkey for a LONG WHILE in the freezer!
I bet they aren't that big, I had a BCM that looked like it weighed all of 10lbs. Culled him plucked him and degutted him, he was 4.5 lbs
You will lose 35-40% weight during processing. Their feathers do make them look larger (heavier) then they are as you will see once you have them on the scale.
