OT Raising Chickens

For several years, I have made this offer to several people and no one would take me up on it. I will buy 50 chicks and furnish all the feed if you will raise and butcher them and we will split them 50/50. Well, a family at our church took me up on the offer. My queston, I have corn in the bin, how much corn will it take to feed out 50 chickens? What would you recommend as the best fryers? He suggested all roosters, you can buy the chicks cheaper, any advantage? He will probably get the chicks in April, I left that up to his schedule. Any thoughts? Chris

thats entirely up to the persons management of the chicks. 50/50 is one reason,because supply feed is not the works of it 75/25 you might got some results sooner but doubt it,most people just don't want the idea of chickens let alone the work.first off baby chicks have hard time dealing with whole shelled corn, i would strongly suggest you buy the chick starter feed, if you want the best turn around for butcher then cornish rock broilers hands down. these you will feed twice daily instead of free choice or you will have some spraddle leg issues resulting in dead chicks most of the time. Do the ones offering to raise your birds have a clean draft free tightly sealed area to start with otherwise you won't have much for results. If you do the roosters do them at young age or they will be tougher and you will have fighting issues. good luck. Been doing the chicken thing since early eighties. have 50 head right now for layers all home hatched and raised. Will be incubating another batch in week or so. i only keep one or two roosters around just for the sounds and when I want eggs to incubate otherwise they have to be nice or otherwise they always get butcher cause they will not allow the hens to nest or even come out and eat etc. Mine are always free range and shut in nightly,which you must do or they will be gone very quickly with coyotes or whatever. thats no problem shutting them in since they go in all time on their own at sunset or so you just shut the door. why don't you just raise them instead,you have your meat supply and eggs,its not hard. all you need is a tight varmit proof area that is most important. heat lamps and feed,clean water and bedding. Let me know i can tell you all i use. i am suprise you found someone to raise them for you and butcher, have they raise them before otherwise I have gut feeling you just have dead birds. good luck. Where you at you want buy some my next batch but you have to pick them up. ps Ihave over 50,000 bushel corn still here so thats not the feed issue

Get rooster chicks they are the cheapest. Still going to have more than corn to get them started as they cannot digest hole corn at young age. Good Luck.
gitrib

Ithink you are in for a big suprise. Chicks must have a balance diet as every animal must have. They get this with a starter mash. Sell your corn and buy your feed. Never have I ever fed straight corn even to adult chickens. It can be done then only if you provide a protein supplement. Good luck. Let us know the results, this may be very interesting.

you will need chick starter feed it also has medication in it that keeps them well until they get going

I think you are in for some premium priced chicken…………

For my money the best meat chicken are the Cornish Giants you find in poultry catalogs. I think there are a couple of breeds - one just grows slightly slower than the other. I've had full grown roosters dress out at 13 pounds with lots of breast meat. Just butcher them smaller for fryers. They grow very fast and because of that can have leg problems. You have to make sure you have the right nutrition for them to avoid the problems and part of the fix is protein. You'll need a lot of soybean meal to get the right protein. I don't know what the economics are with the deal you're making because I only grow 6-10 per year for myself and money isn't the reason I grow them. They do make a great meal.

For the price of meat production in chicken, go with the CornishX broiler chicks. They grow FAST and can put on a pound of weight for every two pounds of feed. Other breeds of chickens grow much more slowly (ie: normal growth for a chicken) and can take up to 12 or even more weeks on feed to reach a decent size. Also, you should aim to use a mixed, complete ration feed. They need the hi-test feed to do well. Little chicks can't handle whole corn. Adults (5-6 months or more) can eat whole corn, but not the little guys.

One final issue. If summers get hot (higher than upper 80s) where you are, you're going to have heat stress issues with your birds as they get bigger, especially the CornishX birds. We raise broilers to sell and have always had trouble here in the summers, so much so that we aim to only have full size birds in the fall and no later than mid to late May in the spring.

HTH

Christopher

50 roosters that don't even lay eggs walking around the yard and crowing and crapping all over to save a few bucks? You guys must have a lot more patience than I would!

CornishX will take a 22 or 23% starter and a 20% grower. Sell your corn and buy that, or use it to grind part of the ration. Medicated or not for the starter, we have done both ways and loss was negligible for both.

Feed em twice a day morning and afternoon. Give them access to a good sized yard, they won't use it a lot but it does help keep the bad legs to a minimum.
We lost 15 out of 100 the first year we did em due to bad legs and mysterious heart problems. Since we went to twice a day instead of all day feeding the only ones we lost were due to predators and a couple to piling during an unexpected cold snap.
With CornishX the roosters are more expensive since they are meat birds. Worth the extra though since you can put a lot of feed through an egg layer type and end up with very little meat. We have bought the CornishX pullets (which are cheaper) and been pleased with the way they grow out. Once we did a straight run and butchered the cocks early and the hens later which lightened up the workload on butcher day....

Apparently you've never been able to taste much difference between store chicken and farm raised chicken, nor have you seen the blood being cooked out of store chicken while little comes out of the properly bled out farm butchered chicken.

There is a tremendous difference that is well worth any aggravation.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I know they can't eat shelled corn, but I was wondering how much corn I need to take in to have ground or cracked to mix with the protein. The family raising them has been raising chickens for several years, so they know what they are doing in raising and dressing them. I am looking forward to some GOOD tasting chicken. I can't reason out selling my corn to buy back more expensive corn to feed them. I raised some chickens 30 years ago, and after dressing them, the wife said NEVER AGAIN, so I'm going to try this. Chris

We raise cornish Xrocks. last year we did 50 and split them with someone else. From now on we are going to raise 10-15 a year for ourselfs. We get straight run chicks , raise them for 8-9 weeks and end up with some of the best tasting 8-12lbs. chickens we have ever had. And OH SO TENDER.

we raise cornishX and weve tried various feeds but the best is still store bought feed nutrena is good and is the cheapest feed purena is a good feed but in my area 5 dollars more a bag. weve also used custom mixed feed of 30% corn 30% wheat 25% linsead meal and 5% various mineral and vitamin additives. alfalfa meal can be used as well but linsead meal is higher in protien. also we use a chicken tractor its a 10x16foot pin thats 2 feet high that i can move every day by hand so they get fresh grass this helps some with the amount feed requirment. but thats what works for us