Raising a variety of meat breeds

[OrganicFarmWife]

So i have decided to raise freerange meat chickens this summer. The goal is to have enough birds to give us a chicken a week for the year. I have raised cornish cross last year and while i agree they are delicious, i want to try some other breeds to see if i like their personality better. I will also try to keep a few females back for breeding and fertile eggs for next year.
I think i will probably get 75 birds, in 25 increments (Hoovers has a 25 bird minimum) I have so far ordered 13 red ranger and 12 rainbow dixie birds to be delivered the 15th. I already have a good brooding room set up in my barn but i still need to build a tractor and rebuild my broiler pen.

We have a old lowboy on the farm that is no longer in use that i was told i could have for the tractor.

We also have some old hog farrowing crates, lots of old tin for roofing and plenty of old wood. Ideally i would like to build everything with stuff we already have on the farm (FIL is a bit of a hoarder it would be great and inexpensive if i could use some of it up)
This will be many more chickens then i have ever raised and i have little experience building. Any tips or insight will be appreciated.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

After about 2 hours of work i now have the floor done

I can now safely walk across the whole thing without boards giving way or falling through a hole.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

This is one of the old outbuildings that must go

I have already caught my two daughters, thing 1 and thing 2, climbing on it.

So it is now a saftey issue. We thought we might be able to reuse most of the lumber and all of the tin roofing.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

My second batch of meat birds are doing well. They are now a week old and I went ahead and got a weight for them.

First up is the Rainbow Dixie Males. I have five of them. Their average weight is 96 grams, the largest being 112 grams, my smallest is 75 grams.

Second up is my Red Ranger Males, he was not interested in the photo op. I also have five of these. The average weight of these is 105 grams, the largest being 127 grams, the smallest being 61 grams.

Finally I have eight Jersey Giants, started with ten. They seemed to fair the worst in the travel. These are a straight run. The average weight of these chicks is 54 grams, the largest being 63, the smallest being 49.
I also have a mixture of female Rainbow Dixie and Red Ranger, they are not as clearly marked so will wait to compare weights.

 

[MannyB]

Maybe late now but I have seen the bedding in my brooder be the cause of wet chicks.
Sometimes they will kick the bedding up into the waterer edge and then a wicking action through the wood chips or paper can drain the waterer into the bedding. I caught it quick in my brooder but it still drawing bed half the quart sized waterer in 30 min.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

Great thread keep it up.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

They are only 8weeks. I am certian he is a male, they just couldn't tell me if he was a decent male. I am not looking for a show bird by any means, but I figured I wanted to get a Rooster that was as close as possible to SOP for breeding. Mine are more skittish then the others, they hate weekly weigh in, but they are also smaller then my other meaties. It could be that because the others are so much larger and slower then the JG, the JG seem more skittish in comparison. I did get a decent picture of him last night, I think it is him, he removed his tag This was taken at a distance and zoomed up.

The Colonel acknowledges your appreciation of his form with his typical aloofness. I say thank you for the compliment. Jerseys 'grow' slower than other birds because they have to build alot more frame to support the largeness of their mature size and so they tend to be a bit behind the curve and look more lanky than other breeds at that age or being all 'knees and elbows' as I like to call it. Some of the characteristics that set a bird of mediocre breeding apart from a really great bird in the case of Jersey Giants are Face, feet and posture. His face should be red with comb and wattles the same, free of black. Not talking about his feathers but his skin. For his feet you want to see some of that yellow color on the bottoms which he does have based on your other pictures. When standing still his toes should both point forward and not at all appear bowlegged or splayed with tail held erect at about a 70 degree angle. From what I see this bird does look pretty good for 8 weeks. Thank you for sharing! EDIT: I read about your missing bird. I don't know how many chickens you have out there but I missed one of my Jerseys during a storm and she got attacked over night too. They are hard to see after the sun goes down. Be vigilant, whatever is after your chickens is not going to stop.

I know and agree. We will get it. My brother has some experience with traping and hunting and is looking for something to do. I am just going to have to get stricter about appropriate bed times for birds.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

I am thinking about waiting until fall. I know that they do not really put on weight until after a year. I figured we would process the JG once I had the fryers gone. I am tempted to allow at least one of the cockerels to grow to full size, giving me a huge bird to serve for next Christmas.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

This is the design i have in mind to try.

I got the rough plans from this book

It is completely open on one side to help keep the coop cool in the summer heat.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

We have a bunch of these old farrowing cages.

They are about 2×6 and manage to fit perfectly on the trailer. They also, with only a little work, will stack on top of each other.

We will need to get our local welder to design a door for me, but this seems to be very doable and really cuts down on the lumber i will need to buy.

The panels are heavy and so i was not able to do much today. I will need to weight until i have help to build it any higher and i also need to get more plywood.