We’re Halfway to Butcher Day // Raising Meat Chickens {Week 4}

Our Cornish cross hens are 4 weeks old. Are they ready to move into the chicken tractor? First time raising pastured poultry meat chickens.

🐓 Raising Meat Chickens in 8 WEEKS!: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiBilDABA650M3S7ASEwunXTy-0KVzOVF
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We purchased 30 Cornish cross females from Meyer Hatchery. Cornish cross are incredibly fast growers – from hatch to butcher in only 8 weeks. We’ve done quite a bit of research on this and feel very well prepared but everyone knows there’s no replacement for experience. If you’ve thought about raising meat chickens but just haven’t made that commitment yet I hope you can look to our experiences as something you can learn from. If we can do it, so can you!

💪 AVG. WEIGHTS:
Week 1 – 3.8oz
Week 2 – 12.0oz
Week 3 – 1lb, 2.6oz
Week 4 – 2lb, 1.4oz

We’ve been waiting for the weather to warm up before we moved our meat chickens into the tractor. Having these partially-featherless birds exposed to subfreezing temperatures made me nervous so over the past week we weaned them off the heat lamp in the brooder as the temperatures slowly crept back to more normal levels. Now spring is here to stay (we hope) and with only one month left until butcher day it’s time to get these birds on pasture. As we move them around in the tractor they get a chance to forage a little – at least as much as Cornish cross chickens forage – but more importantly they’re pumping a whole lot of natural fertilizer into the field. When this is all said and done we’ll have plenty of chicken in the freezer and our pasture should be in better shape than when we started.

The feed trough that we built from a gutter last week is working out great. Starting soon we’ll be giving the birds both feeders as they continue to eat more and more and more and one feeder just won’t cut it any longer. And coming up real soon we’ll be revamping our chicken plucking machine. This thing is a dinosaur but it was given to us by a family friend who hoped we’d put it to good use. If you want to see that be sure to subscribe to the channel, and share this video with a friend as it really helps us out. Thanks so much – see y’all soon!
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