Want to try meat birds.

[tackleberry]

I let my first ever cornish crosses go to 14 weeks and wound up with 10 pound birds, dressed. When I gave them away everyone asked if they were turkeys. I didnt know anything about the meat birds last autumn. I just bought 30 from Orscheln's and put up a pen. Now I know, ha ha ha ha ha ha. Best chicken I ever ate though, same from every one else who ate the birds we raised.

 

[Birddog1148]

Any Idea what brred or sex these are? If they are hens I may spare them and add em to the layers.

Look how big the breasts are already! Way bigger proportionaly than my year old pullets!

 

[Charlieandlola]

barred rock maybe?

 

[Birddog1148]

Added 6 more and cot the new coop up in the garage, Hauled it on the trailer from the shop to the house so I will take more pics of it when I take it down for storage.

 

[Birddog1148]

look at the top of the pic

 

[Birddog1148]

I have one that I think has a bad leg now, cant seem to get up, should I go ahead and butcher it now? Its about as round as a big canalope or a very small watermelon. Keeps its head up and is alert just seems like one leg wont work. Not pictured

 

[SunnysMama]

I would go ahead and butcher it because it's leg won't get any better.

 

[cornycross]

What is the suspected cause of the leg not working issue? I found a Cornish cross that couldn't move either leg at 3 weeks old, it died 2 days later but was still eating and drinking a bit. Then another with one leg not working at 4 weeks. I separated the second one so it had food and water right in front of it, but the next day, both legs were not working, just stuck to its belly even when held upside down. 2 days later it was done eating, so I shot it in the head and its legs kicked like crazy. I thought it may have been a stroke? Is leg failure common or do I have something else going on. I take food away overnight to slow down over-eating but they act starving in morning. They are outside now and I spread there feed over a 100 sq. ft. area to make them move around while eating and take longer to get full, but they eat all day. I lost 3 at 2/3 days old then the other 2 at a few weeks old, seems like 5 lost out of 14 is pretty high casualty. I fed medicated feed to vaccinated chicks, could that have caused these problems? They are looking pretty tasty at 5 weeks old though.

 

[Birddog1148]

That's the one with the leg problems, not sure how it made it too that side of the pen, wasn't there this morning.


Any Idea on the sex of the barred roc?

 

[missnu01]

Hmm...we have 9 Cornish x that are now 6 weeks old...no problems with any of them...

[/IMG]
The other 4 are wandering around somewhere but there's 5 of them