Rearing Your Own Meat!

Alganiti,, These are so cute .... but I do love to eat chicken too. What a great pic of Paxo - if that is him.

Hard isn't it ? I admire you, and know what you are doing is right. Just give them the best little life you can. My Father was part North American Indian and he said that his tribe (and all of them I think) used to give thanks to the animals before they killed it, and honour it as they ate it. We just need to be grateful for what we have, and that includes your little chickens (dinner)

However I know I would end up keeping some of them as pets ......

can we have update pics as they get bigger - you do not often get to see a teenaged chicken, just teensy and then big. (okay can tell I am trapped in a town can't you)
 
:lol: :lol: :lol:

The scary thing is that if these were being commercially reared as in supermarket chicken, these would be killed at 42 to 49 days old :o thats 6/7 weeks old :o they would weigh (oven ready) 1.4 to 1.8kgs, now bear mind these photo's were taken today at 11 days old, so if they were in a broiler house they would have just 30 more days to turn into a medium size chicken :what: scary isn't it?

Thankfully at 6 weeks old these will be let loose on the garden to "Seek & Destroy" every pest in sight :lol: we plan to keep them until they are between 12 & 16 weeks old depending on how big they are, the free ranging does slow their weight gain down but it does add to the flavour, they should weigh around 3kg (oven ready) at that time, saying that a friend of mine has just killed one at 19 weeks & it weighed 4.5kgs :o

Will photo them again in a week or so's time
 
Aldaniti, i ment to post this when you first brought up the topic but forgot!! Sheepdrove is an organic farm in Lambourn, there is quite a few articles on the website about organic farming that you may find interesting. My bf works there so we get a lot of meat from there (:ph34r: but dont tell the bosses :lol:) and your right, it is much tastier than commercially bred meat http://www.sheepdrove.com/
 
Originally posted by Aldaniti@Feb 2 2007, 11:26 AM
Paxo & the gang have arrived :o I'm supposed to eat these in a few weeks :unsure:


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That little cutey is gonna be soooooooooooo tasty, :P
 
Don't kill them Helen. We had farm visits back in primary school but missed one of ours so the farmer gave the teacher 12 eggs to hatch, an incubator for them and a pen to keep them in when they hatched. Think they were geese, well we had them for about 25 or so days checking them each day till one started to hatch, within a couple of days we had 12 baby geese (goslings?) in a pen. The farmer being busy at that time of year couldn't pick them up so we had 12 almost fully grown geese and by this time fully domesticated by 30 children flying and running around the classroom for 2 months.

Health and safety would have had a field day.
 
Factory farming is horrific, I used to respect PETA to a degree but every since their campaign last year which involved accusing parents of child abuse if they fed their children meat was one step too far :angry:
 
Is the little brown one a different breed, and is it accepted as one of the flock, or pecked on? Why do some of the chooks have little crests and others don't?
 
Many thanks SS much appreciated :)

Krizon, the ones with the crests are cockerels, they always mature at a faster rate than the hens, there are two of the brown type (2nd one you just see under the heat lamp) they are throw backs for want of a better word! at the moment they haven't noticed :laughing:

Martin we may be keeping a couple for eggs to produce future meat chucks but as they have been bred for meat they don't lay as many eggs as others would! we already have some ex battery chucks that lay quite well & keep us in egg supply, it would be a bit like breeding Jersey cows for meat! although saying that I watched something recently about someone doing that, can't remember why though shrug::

We cleaned them out yesterday as the bedding pretty much had it, whats quite scary is that when these are raised in the broiler houses they don't clean them out until they go off to slaughter at 7/8 weeks old :eek: I've been raking the sawdust everyday since they arrived which keeps it much dryer, if I didn't the sawdust compacts & gets very dirty quickly, its no surprise the broiler house birds get hock burns!

We have only had one casualty so far which is good as they say that buying day olds you should expect to loose 10% which would be three birds, I dare not think what the expected casualty rate is for broiler birds!

Helen
 
Well today was their last day in the garden :( well whats left of the garden anyway! I have no grass, instead I have a million white feathers all over the garden, they have to stay in a pen tomorrow & are just going to be fed some corn to keep their crops clean, then on Sunday morning they will be traveling the 20min journey to the farm where they will be processed, They will be hung for a week before I can collect them for the freezer, its been interesting to say the least :what:


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£5 says you cry and feel guilty....


and £10 says you forget all about it cos they will taste fantastic because they have had a happy and healthy life!!

Id be in bits - in so many ways Im quite cold(though I prefer the word practical!!) but in others, im just a massive softie !!!

Good for you - theyve had a wonderful life.
 
Well I have managed to get out of taking them to the farm as my partner has to drop my son off to a guitar lesson on the way, with both of them, guitar & boxes full of chooks there won't be any room for me! shame that :ph34r: still at least I can blub in privacy, the hardest part I think will be going up the garden & not seeing them :(

I was going to comment on how easy I have found it but I think I will leave that until they have gone :shy:
 
Well done Helen - it's that first trip to the abattoir that's always the hardest but it's a good thing that you have a week between seeing them go and getting to eat the first one!

I bet they'll taste fantastic andrather than feel guilty, feel incredibly proud that you have raised them properly and given them a decent, if short, life.
 
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