200+ lbs of Chicken in 45 days
When you first learn how quickly the Cornish X chickens grow, it’s hard to believe. It’s even more extraordinary to watch it happen before your eyes. Especially astonishing towards the end of their growth as they eat more and more and grow ever faster.
Close-up of a Cornish X Cockerel in the sunlight
When you want chickens you have to decide first how you’re going to get them. The whole chicken or the egg thing I suppose. After some time pondering which breed we wanted to start with, we ordered Cornish X chicks from a hatchery in Dallas, TX. Due to an unforeseen delay, the 50 white fluffy chicks arrived only one day before we were to head out on Spring Break with our kids. We quickly got them set up in their metal flashing brooder and swiftly gave the instructions to my father-in-law about how to look over them while we were gone. There isn’t much to do for chicks in the first days of their life. The instructions simply read: “Food: If the trays are empty, fill. Water: If you have to fill it, then these are actually fish, not chickens. Heat: Just make sure the lamp stays plugged in.”
We left for Spring Break with 50 chicks and returned with 48. We expected to lose one or two. We did. And the next week we lost three more. Sometimes it just happens that way. Likely mortality from the stress of travel, perhaps some genetic issues as well. After week two, all the remaining 45 lived to harvest maturity.
6 ft diameter metal flashing ring brooder. Rolls up for storage, easy to clean, adjustable. Garden hose in the waterer so the chicks can’t fall in and chill themselves.
We returned from our week long trip to see these cute little fluff balls had swiftly gained inches in height and weren’t round like buttons anymore. “They’re Monsters!” I exclaimed, tongue-in-cheek. They would continue this growing trend nearly doubling in size as every week passed, and each time I’d bellow, “They’re Monsters!” Once the chicks were three weeks old, we moved them to their permanent grow out space in a large quail pen built for flight-conditioning birds. This was previously used when Edward was running his upland game bird hunting operation a decade ago, and since it wasn’t in use we figured we’d apply the smarter not harder approach and utilize this space in the meantime. We stretched poultry wire to protect them from outside predators and placed a metal sheeting wall to create a space at the front of the pen. Open air and covered.
Our Cornish X at 6 weeks old
Gravity-fed water system, soon to be directly plumbed in as you can see from the geyser!
Feet, hearts, and livers reserved for dog treats. Blood, feathers, and the remaining parts buried in the garden or placed in the compost pile.
Although these particular chickens were not raised on pasture, they always had more than ample space, fluffy pine shaving, fresh cool water, open air, and tasty feed that we supplemented with whole grains. They always stayed bright eyed, and although waddled quite a bit at their largest, there were never any of the common (yet avoidable) lameness or respiratory issues that come with raising fast growing broilers. Admittedly, at the end I would watch them waddle-run expecting for their legs to crack before my eyes because of the horror stories I had read about, but these ended up to be sturdy birds that performed well and were processed at the right time.
View from inside the pen. Father and son working on placing poultry wire.
Every few days we would place one of Cornish X in a 5 gallon bucket attached to a hanging scale to get their stats. Right at 6 weeks the chickens were weighing between 5 and 6lbs. It is said they will lose 30% of their weight after dressing them out, so it was absolutely time to not procrastinate about the harvest date if we wanted table birds to weigh about 4 lbs.
The more some of these birds labored to move their legs under their huge breasts, the more urgent the harvest date became. “Okay, we’re going to butcher these guys on Friday,” Edward and I decided. Shortly after this, our friend called, “We’re thinking about coming to visit this weekend, got anything planned?” Heh… "Oh, just butchering some chickens with you” we replied.
Helpful hands moving the birds
We were fortunate to have willing company that weren’t afraid of birds to help with the processing. Everything took time and focus. The slaughter, managing the scalder temperature, defeathering, evisceration, packaging and labeling. Efficiency will come in time. We didn’t process nearly the amount in the time promised by all the YouTubers and homesteading authors, but we’ll keep working on it. I can say that two of the most important tools for keeping the process streamlined, was access to multiple spray hoses and very sharp knives.
Evisceration
When all was completed, the birds weighed out in their shrink-packaged form between 4.3 and 5.7 lbs. Nothing went to waste, we shared camaraderie with others, and accomplished what we set out to do. Fill freezers with nutritious food raised on the ranch.
The obvious question that comes next is, “Was it worth it?”
Well, the total expenses were $1,160.76, which included all cost for infrastructure and processing equipment.
Total Cost of feed + pine shaving bedding = $363.89, which left $796.87 that went to the cost of the feather plucker, plumbing supplies, squeeze cones, and packaging supplies.
That works out to $8.09 per bird cost of feed and bedding, and $25.79 per bird overall. We already had loads of poultry wire that was given to us by a friend in a trade, and all the waterers and other infrastructure we had from previous endeavors.
Some things we will do differently:
Move to pasture-raised. Lower feed costs and improve nutrient density in the meat through consumption of grasses and insects, no more need for pine shavings, too!
Raise Red Rangers instead. Longer growing, but more athletic birds that are better foragers. Can naturally reproduce, and we hear they taste better.
Buy more squeeze cones. This would allow for faster processing.
So to answer the question. Yes, for us, it was worth it. The next round will inevitably be more affordable and yield a superior end product. It just plainly feels good to know exactly where the chicken we will eat came from, how it was raised, and what it experienced in it’s life.
#ranching #farmlife #chickens #cornishcross #poultry #localfood #diy #aintnothintoitbuttodoit
