Should I do it?

[chickensducks&agoose]

McMurray has got jumbo cornish crosses for pretty cheap (cheep?) and I am considering getting 25. am I ridiculously stupid? How much work will this entail? I will hire someone to... dispatch... them.... I've had chicks before, but never meaties.. I've got the space, and the heat lamps.....

 

[bnentrup]

chickensducks&agoose :

McMurray has got jumbo cornish crosses for pretty cheap (cheep?) and I am considering getting 25. am I ridiculously stupid? How much work will this entail? I will hire someone to... dispatch... them.... I've had chicks before, but never meaties.. I've got the space, and the heat lamps.....

take the plunge... it is worth the effort.. just protect them and research well.​

 

[cassie]

I have raised McMurray's Jumbo Cornish and I was very happy with them. Ours are really low maintenance. I raise them in a well ventilated predator proof 12 x 12 box stall in the barn. We bed with shavings and add more shavings as necessary. I don't clean the stall until after the meaties are gone. I use hanging feeders and waterers. We feed turkey feed and put Murray's Broiler Booster in the water. Feed is available to them from seven in the morning until seven at night at which time I remove it. I process them myself. I do two or three a day. There is a graphic post on Meat Birds that tells you in detail how to proceed.

 

[chickensducks&agoose]

I've got 30 jumbo cornish X's and 10 regular non-jumbo, non-x, cornish in my mcmurray 'cart'... and am sitting here, thinking HARD about pushing 'CHECKOUT'. the female cornish should be processed at about 8 weeks, same as the jumbo Xs... which makes things convenient.. and the other cornishes, I guess around 12 weeks... and if I only have a few of them, I might pawn them off on a friend or neighbor who processes at home... I'm leaning towards it! I've got a 6x6 chicken wire pen and an 8x8 (moveable), that I need to put a lid on, and I've got a 4x8 trailer with a lid, that I used to brood my spring chicks, so I'd keep them in the trailer for the first few weeks, (I bet they grow fast!) then move them into the other pens... free-ranging during the day i guess... though I bet that's a LOT of poop... I've only really got 100 square feet of pen space, but thinking 40 chickens... that sounds crowded... but if they can range during the day, and only SLEEP in the pens, I think that'd be okay.. right?