My husband went deepsea fishing on this day so I had to do farm chores. I got this photo of the trail of the pasture coop on the way out to feed the chicks. The bottom is the oldest footprint.
The chicks will be 2 months old (or 9 weeks) on July 1st. They aren’t gawky teenagers anymore, but are mini chickens.
This is the Barred Rock rooster. They have reverse coloring, so are easy to spot once feathered out. He started trying to crow on this day. Fortunately: 1. My husband was away fishing, and 2. He’s also too deaf to hear the squeaky start to crowing.
I had to push the coop farther along the pasture that morning. Before I can do this I have to take out the swinging feeders and waterer, so the chicks don’t get hit with them. The chicks have figured out they can make the valve drip if they peck it.
This day was the first of the hot days so I brought out the chicks’ lap pool to cool them off. They love the pool, which I put pint size ice cubes in shortly after noon each day. They stand in it, cooling their feet.
They are checking me out, to see if I have any other goodies to offer. This flock of chicks has been one of the best ones yet. They were very quick to figure out where to be when the coop is moved so they don’t get run over. They aren’t afraid of us, as some flocks have been. They are all pullets, except the 1 (or 2) roosters, and are Barred Rocks and Australorps.
So, since you are going the heritage route for your broilers, how long for them to grow out? We've always done Cornish Cross for our broilers, but next week have our first set of Freedom Rangers coming so we can try them out, but from a production stand point, I don't know if we will like them due to the extra grow out time. Cornish Cross just kind of freak us out and we don't like raising them really.
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We raised the Cornish our very 1st year, and NEVER again!
I've heard Freedom rangers are an 11 week grow out, vs 48 days for Cornish. We let our heritage birds go 18 weeks. Some breeds do well in that time, some poorly. Our calendar is hatched May 1, Freezer Camp labor Day weekend.
From a cost/feed aspect, the longer you keep a bird the more expensive the meat becomes. We stick with heritage for 2 reasons:
So that's why we do what we do.
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Don’t blame you on the Cornish, we are running them for business. I’m hoping our last batch of Cornish gets processed next week and then we will be done. Interesting on the birds you are choosing. Austrolorps are a big bird but have you considered Brahmas or Jersey Giants? We raise both as our egg layers and competition birds (our daughters compete and work on genetics). They are a great dual purpose bird with Very mild temperaments. We have gone through a lot of roosters and breed a lot for blood lines and genetics purposes and have NEVER had a mean Brahma. We only raised the austrolorps for a short while and can’t comment on them much.
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The Australorps are part of the mix for layers. They usually don't get very big as a meat bird in 18 weeks.
We never considered Brahmas due to feathered feet. That would be a frost bite hazard here.
We did do black Jersey Giants one year, but they took 24 - 27 weeks to reach weight. They were just too small at 18 to run thro Freezer Camp. We also had gotten them from a hatchery and the genetics, at the time (they were listed as endangered) were very poor. Cross beaked, structural malforms, etc. Looks like we got them from McMurray.
This is a post I did regarding all the breeds we'd used up until 2017 and what hatchery we got them from:
https://steemit.com/chickenflock/@goldenoakfarm/building-our-flock-with-breed-blocks
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