Fn87
Chirping
Hello this is my first time raising chicks. I work at a farm and we received a shipment of 300 or so layer chicks five weeks back. Around 70 of them were leghorns, 25 are welsummers, 100 are isa browns, and 100 are various easter eggers. We have been raising them in a brooder inside our greenhouse.
Fast forward to now, I've found out to my alarm and dismay that the "little" guys we'd thought were leghorns are actually turning into rather massive Cornish Meat Crosses. (I thought they looking kind of huge considering leghorns are a pretty slim breed and they were over taking the ISA browns in leaps and bounds and recently had my suspicions confirmed on here) They've been panting in the brooder, the temperature probably too warm for their stocky bodies, they've been going through a 50lb bag of food a day (Purina Start & Grow medicated and unmedicated), and the ISA browns (and some of the other breeds too) have been relentlessly picking at their feathers to the point that we had to separate out the wounded leghorns and raise them in our other greenhouse while they recover from the cuts.
We didn't mean to raise meat hens (obviously), the hatchery just really messed up. And I'm sure there are all sorts of precautions and licensing involved in raising birds for food. I really don't know what we'll do with them only one or two weeks away from when they normally would be butchered. But out of curiosity, what should we have done if we were raising meat hens? What should we be doing now in order to keep them "healthy", and what should we have been doing now if we had intended to raise meat hens?
Again, we're feeding them Purina start & grow which they are allowed to eat unmonitored. They're drinking water with apple cider vinegar. They're being raised in a brooder kept at 70º to 75º F. We let them out into an enclosure perhaps roughly 80 or 90 square feet every day inside of our greenhouse. They're on pine shavings in the brooder and straw in the enclosure - we don't have any grass for them in the greenhouse
. We haven't been changing out the pine shavings because of how it stresses out the chicks and instead add more pine shavings on top when it looks like it's getting too humid or smelly. Inside the brooder we're using heat lamps with red bulbs and with ceramic bulbs.
Fast forward to now, I've found out to my alarm and dismay that the "little" guys we'd thought were leghorns are actually turning into rather massive Cornish Meat Crosses. (I thought they looking kind of huge considering leghorns are a pretty slim breed and they were over taking the ISA browns in leaps and bounds and recently had my suspicions confirmed on here) They've been panting in the brooder, the temperature probably too warm for their stocky bodies, they've been going through a 50lb bag of food a day (Purina Start & Grow medicated and unmedicated), and the ISA browns (and some of the other breeds too) have been relentlessly picking at their feathers to the point that we had to separate out the wounded leghorns and raise them in our other greenhouse while they recover from the cuts.
We didn't mean to raise meat hens (obviously), the hatchery just really messed up. And I'm sure there are all sorts of precautions and licensing involved in raising birds for food. I really don't know what we'll do with them only one or two weeks away from when they normally would be butchered. But out of curiosity, what should we have done if we were raising meat hens? What should we be doing now in order to keep them "healthy", and what should we have been doing now if we had intended to raise meat hens?
Again, we're feeding them Purina start & grow which they are allowed to eat unmonitored. They're drinking water with apple cider vinegar. They're being raised in a brooder kept at 70º to 75º F. We let them out into an enclosure perhaps roughly 80 or 90 square feet every day inside of our greenhouse. They're on pine shavings in the brooder and straw in the enclosure - we don't have any grass for them in the greenhouse
. We haven't been changing out the pine shavings because of how it stresses out the chicks and instead add more pine shavings on top when it looks like it's getting too humid or smelly. Inside the brooder we're using heat lamps with red bulbs and with ceramic bulbs.
;-;
