Ramblings of a newbie starting a self-sustaining meat bird flock…

[imacowgirl2]

The new batch of chicks were weighed today at 4 weeks old. They are roughly 0.1 to 0.2 pounds ahead of the last batch, so I think the meat bird feed is making a difference.

 

[imacowgirl2]

I had wondered how my NH birds would stack up against the other birds at the county fair...turns out, pretty well

Pretty Boy, the 11 month old cockerel, took 2nd place in his class (and that was even with some unwanted little feathers on his legs...can't remember what the judge called them?)

The 8 month old pullets look so mature that the judge at first labelled them as being in the wrong class (saying they are hens) because they look so mature -- after I told him I guaranteed they were hatched on January 16 (after consulting my software for exact hatch date) and the judge's scribe vouched for me being an honest person, he immediately moved them to first and second place in the pullet class.

Will be interested to see how they do at State Fair later this week...

 

[Mwhit]

I had wondered how my NH birds would stack up against the other birds at the county fair...turns out, pretty well

Pretty Boy, the 11 month old cockerel, took 2nd place in his class (and that was even with some unwanted little feathers on his legs...can't remember what the judge called them?)

The 8 month old pullets look so mature that the judge at first labelled them as being in the wrong class (saying they are hens) because they look so mature -- after I told him I guaranteed they were hatched on January 16 (after consulting my software for exact hatch date) and the judge's scribe vouched for me being an honest person, he immediately moved them to first and second place in the pullet class.

Will be interested to see how they do at State Fair later this week...

Awesome! They probably haven’t seen pullets that large before.

 

[imacowgirl2]

This summer has been rough…with our crazy busy schedule we ended up losing more chicks then I had hoped, mostly due to hawks and raccoons. However, we currently have 7 chicks of varying ages in the meatbird run! These birds seem to grow so slowly for the first 3-4 weeks (at least for meat birds…they keep pace with my layer chicks for the first month or so) then suddenly take off…in this picture, there is only ten days age difference between that big one in the foreground and the two further back. The big one is about 5.5 weeks old and the other two are right at 4 weeks old. I really thought he was a lot older than them until I checked records!

 

[HomesteadNowhere]

Just read up this thread. Very nice! Hope you keep sharing.

 

[Adorae]

How has your project been going?