Raising meat birds & leg injuries

[Skyler vaughan]

I often post about injuries and diseases on here because I find that this is the best place for it, we're a family farm who have, in the last two years, started raising meat birds to sell. We've noticed with a certain breed that the young cockerels will have a leg injury, one day they'll be fine and healthy and the next one of their legs will have given way; worse case both of the legs go.
We have s44's and 757's which we believe are red Cornish crosses, the s44's (brown) are mainly the ones who suffer from leg injuries, even though they're outside on grass and we feed them organic feed. If I find one to be limping, I'll take it to the avery so it's separated (with a few other poorly ones) and give them vitamins, kale or anything extra.
They never seem to get better even when you rest them so we have to put them down, does anyone have experience with this and know what it could be? They're never overweight or growing to fast as we have the breed that grows at a normal pace. Please help!

 

[humblehillsfarm]

I often post about injuries and diseases on here because I find that this is the best place for it, we're a family farm who have, in the last two years, started raising meat birds to sell. We've noticed with a certain breed that the young cockerels will have a leg injury, one day they'll be fine and healthy and the next one of their legs will have given way; worse case both of the legs go.
We have s44's and 757's which we believe are red Cornish crosses, the s44's (brown) are mainly the ones who suffer from leg injuries, even though they're outside on grass and we feed them organic feed. If I find one to be limping, I'll take it to the avery so it's separated (with a few other poorly ones) and give them vitamins, kale or anything extra.
They never seem to get better even when you rest them so we have to put them down, does anyone have experience with this and know what it could be? They're never overweight or growing to fast as we have the breed that grows at a normal pace. Please help!

I noticed my Cornish Cross will sort of smash each other in a giant cuddle pile at night. I've lost one to probably suffocation before and another to a leg injury. I couldn't help but to think it had been stepped on. So there's a small chance that could be the injury. After the first week or two, some people like to give them 12 hrs on of feed and 12 hrs off of feed. I do tend to limit my CX if they run out of food in the afternoon I leave it empty until bedtime and fill it back up. Not exactly 12 on and 12 off, but at 7 weeks old the average weight of my birds was close to 7 lbs after dressing out, so didn't impact size or quality of product. I have considered trying the freedom ranger. Meyer hatchery says they are at processing size at 9 weeks old I believe.