The meat birds are just over 6 weeks old and I’m deciding on when to process them. They have “interesting” growth spurts, so, one day I feel like they are still so small, and a couple days later – “BOOM” – they’ve gotten bigger. I think I will give them until 8 weeks, unless they look like they are having problems, and I will process them then.
These photos were taken on the 6th week from me bringing them home. They have been out in a coop/run for over a week and seem to be doing fine. I move the feed in and out of the building to be sure that, during the day they are out in the run, and at night they will go back inside.
These birds drink a LOT of water…more than twice what the same amount of my laying hens drink, so if you’re going to start your own meat flock, just keep that in mind as you will need to check their water source frequently.
This first photo is a bit before they turned 6 weeks…I had both food and water in the coop the first couple/three days that they were out there as I was closing them in completely at night (and I work 12-hour nights, so they end up indoors well before the sun goes down).
You can see some still have bald spots on their necks…not sure if that’s common to the breed, or if it’s just something wrong with my flock.
Since moving the first flock out of this run over a year ago (into the “Dream Coop”), lots of grass and weeds – a lot of chickweed, actually! – had grow up in this run, so these birds have the next best thing to free ranging available to them.
I had heard that meat breeds aren’t very active…a friend compared them to “fat, sweaty old men” – and she’s not wrong! Since they eat and drink so much, they poop a ton…and they stink so much worse than my layers ever did. But, they move around more than I thought they would, so they must not be too fat yet!
Of course, there’s always one or two who just sort of “plop” where they are. I’ve been told that meat birds grow so fast that sometimes their legs cannot support them adequately. While I see a lot of them just lounging around, they all do get up and waddle (yes, waddle!) away from me when I try to round them up to go indoors at night. I have the run pretty well predator-proofed, so I’ve stopped making them all go inside in the evening – if they want the food, they’ll have to go in, but there’s still grass and bugs to scratch for outside so I don’t think they all go in at night.
I will eventually post my processing adventure, so I hope you’ll come back to check that out.
PreppinWolf 