The 4H broiler contest coop

[MissPrissy]

Mark, not trying to scare you just trying to give you a full picture of what to expect. They grow over night. You can literally see them change from one night to the next morning.

 

[silkiechicken]

Quote:
Haha, I didn't pluck the little guy, He just dragged his belly bare along the ground. Besides, I skin them, much easier and healthier.

 

[suburbanhomesteader]

I'm not trying to scare you either. This was my first time raising broilers, and I bit off a LOT more than I thought I had. I will do it again, but I will be better prepared next time.

I COMPLETELY disagree with the "just add more wood chips" idea. First off, the combination of carbon (wood) and nitrogen (poop) has the wood chips from 4 days ago already composting under the new layers of chips!!! The one week I tried to just keep adding chips, I had a temp of 120 degrees at the bottom of the floor!

Another problem was the ammonia smell and moisture. Piling more chips on top of old ones produced a strong ammonia smell in the shed, with 5 days; enough to bother my breathing when I was in the shed. Also, I presume the ammonia was giving a chemical burn to their bare belly and chest; they were not just lacking feathers, their skin actually looked injured.

I have them in a tractor now, and I move it every day without fail. The yard is becoming a poopy mess (thank goodness I have 3/4 acre) and the dogs love to eat the bigger chunks of poop (triple-whammy yuck!) left behind after a fresh move. I'm hoping that if it ever rains, the grass will really green up in that area!

My neighbors have commented on the smell. The tractor is so far from them that it doesn't disgust them, but they have commented that my yard is starting to smell like a barnyard. Thank goodness the tractor is far enough away that they can't smell it for real!

All that said, I went out and weighed some of the roos; at 7 wks today, the Cornish Xs are between 5-6 lbs (probably over a pound of that is in their crop, I bet) and the Black Broilers are only 3lbs. At this rate, I'll have the BBs all winter!

Don't forget, I'm in southern Dallas county, so if you want to come out and take a peek for yourself, let me know!

Meg
[email protected]

 

[Mark]

The county youth fair has come and gone, as have our Cornish Xs. The chicks grew freakishly fast. The below pictures don't communicate how fast these chicks grew. When fair day came, they were wonderfully docile and cooperative. They were never pretty, and displayed the standard 'bare belly' as they never did anything but lay around and eat. The judge liked them, though. We came in 5th.

A thanks goes to Meg. A visit to see her chickens in early December was extremely helpful.

 

[silkiechicken]

Now the big question is, will you do it again? Or, have you been forever scared of these birds and chickens.

 

[MissPrissy]

My birds were completely feathered out on the belly. I was surprised as much as they laid down and ate themselves silly. I think that is because I kept everything so clean and dry. I just couldn't stand the mess.

I echo silkie - will you do it again?

What happened to the chickens after the fair? Here they auction the fair livestock.

 

[Mark]

silkiechicken asks:

>Now the big question is, will you do it again?

Raise Cornish Xs for the fair? Sure. The fair was a lot of fun, a real family event. At this point, everyone in the family is looking forward to next year's fair.

MissPrissy writes:

>What happened to the chickens after the fair?
>Here they auction the fair livestock.

Our county has a 'premium auction'. An auction is held, but there is no change in ownership of the animals. About 80% of the animals are left at the fair, and a local packing plant comes by and picks them up after the fair is over. In my case, I made arrangements with the father of another contestant, and we processed our chickens the next day. Neither DW or my granddaughter had fallen in love with these birds, so restoring some traditional farm practices was less difficult than I had imagined. Thus, the 'unlovable' aspect of Cornish Xs is now somewhat endearing.

That 'unlovable' aspect still puzzles me a bit. These birds never feathered out very well. They were in a perpetual bad hair day. They did nothing but eat, sleep and poop. That poop was an unhealthy, foul dark liquid that shot out of their rear ends with unnerving frequency. One chick went lame about 2 weeks before the fair. We put it in its own box with its head near a dish with food and another dish with water. We thought it would die after a few days, but it just kept eating and ended up almost as heavy as the other birds. Meanwhile, these birds all grew at a rate that compared well with monster movies.

After talking with other contestants, it seems clear that much of this was simply a reflection of how we raised the birds. They had light 24 hours a day. We stirred them up every six hours, and when we woke them up they would immediately start eating. We gave them unlimited amounts of food. Some of the birds at the fair were only half the size of our birds. It seems these birds grew up without the 24/7 feeding schedule. In other words, if you don't force feed them, they are much like other chickens. From what I hear, the 24/7 feeding schedule can only be sustained for 9 or 10 weeks, at which point the body starts breaking down. So I'm wondering, were the birds unhealthy freaks simply because that was the way we raised them? And, to confuse the situation, if you want to win, you have to feed them 24/7.

My interests tend toward sustainable farming (in my case, hobby farming), so I'm wondering if you can get tasty broilers of good size by raising them in a pasture without artificial light and a lot of high protein feed. For now, these questions will have to stay unanswered. We are going to skip raising 'heavy' birds for a while. I ordered 16 laying hen chicks this morning. They should be here in a couple of weeks.

Mark