Raising Meat Birds
If you haven’t had a homegrown chicken before, you are missing out! They are full of meat, juicy, and free of any artificial growth hormones. Next to locally sourced and organic beef, it’s the best meat you’ll eat!
Let me start with a quick and important note on how these birds are different from your egg-laying hens. Meat birds are bred to grow quickly! We’re talking fully grown within 8 weeks. It’s a true science in getting these birds to grow at the rate they do and there are only a few large operations that have it down expertly, so if wanting to raise your own chickens for meat, going to one of these sources is a great and safe bet.
Egg-laying hens grow at a much slower (or normal) rate so by the time they’re at a size where you can process (about 6 months old), the meat is tough and can only be cooked EXTRA slowly (think a crockpot stew).
We raised our first batch of 10 chicks a few months a go and haven’t bought chicken from the store again! Our last batch was 21 and that’ll last us quite a while. As we get low, we’ll order another 30 to 40 and start the process again! Here’s how we do it!
HOW TO IN A FEW EASY STEPS
1. Purchasing your birds from a reputable source. As I mentioned, it really is a science to get these birds bred in a manner that allows them to grow at an exponential rate. It takes generations of breeding the right types of chickens to get them to grow the way Cornish Cross Broilers grow so that you can harvest the meat before it’s too tough to be palatable unless you plan on slow cooking everything. We did a lot of research to try and avoid purchasing but everything we found pointed us to the same conclusion – it was still more cost-effective to purchase from a supplier than spending an unknown amount of time and money to breed the traits we needed to get meat birds. Tractor Supply often has some you can purchase but you can find a few great sources outside of TS. We ordered a large batch from Hoover’s Hatchery last time around – each chick was about 2 bucks so not a bad deal at all! The price recently rose (gotta love inflation) so shop around to see if anyone else can beat the current pricing. In terms of the size of your purchase order, if you know you want to process 25 birds, I recommend purchasing 30 to 35. Always account for loss – either other animals, in transit loss (they’re coming by mail in most cases), or just sheer name of the game when raising small livestock.
2. First 2 weeks you’ll want to keep your chicks in a spot where you can easily regulate the temperature. They grow quickly but remember, they’re still babies so you’ll need to keep them warm (95 degrees is the recommended temp.) depending on your weather conditions. We kept ours in our garage and treated them much like we would egg-laying hens. Plenty of clean bedding, fresh water, and they were able to eat freely at all times. We did feed our chicks a different feed – it was an organic, high protein based feed with extra calcium to help develop strong bones for when they began putting on weight.
3. Weeks 2-8 (or 9). Around the second week you can boot your chicks outside! I built a rather large chicken tractor on wheels (photo below) so once they were outside, we made sure to move them every other day to a fresh spot of grass. This is also the time where we started feeding them on a schedule. These birds will literally eat themselves to death – remember, they’re bred to gain weight quickly so they are definitely vigorous eaters! We let them have access to their feed for 12 hours straight, always had access to clean water, and of course they were free to graze within the tractor. We fed them the high protein feed and mixed in extra vitamins to support their health and growth. We didn’t do this the first time and noticed that the second time around, our chickens were far less lethargic, moved around easier, and were a bit stronger so I recommend providing them vitamins as well!
4. Process. By week 8, your chickens are fully grown! You can process them or let them go another week if you want to have them pack on another pound or so (I wouldn’t recommend more than 10 weeks). I’ll have another post fully dedicated to processing your birds!
WHAT EQUIPMENT DO YOU NEED?
It doesn’t take much. If you’ve raised chickens before, you need pretty much the same gear!
Feeders & Waterers
Heat lamp (for the first 2 weeks, maybe 3 depending on your local climate - no different than raising your egg layers)
Chicken Tractor OR something to easily contain them and keep them safe. They don’t need nesting boxes as they won’t hit the mature age needed to actually lay eggs for you.
High-protein feed
Vitamins (optional but highly recommended)
If you’re processing them yourselves, there’s an entirely separate list of items so I’ll write about that soon!
OTHER THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW
These birds are smelly! They eat a ton and poop a ton! We moved ours around in our front yard out of sheer convenience and for the added shade but it’s a great idea to have them in a pasture they can freely fertilize or near the garden where you can easily repurpose all of that chicken manure.
They grow faster than their feathers so they look a bit wild during certain stages. This is nothing to be alarmed about. It’s completely normal.
I do NOT recommend raising these birds in the middle of the Texas summer. We didn’t think about the weather conditions and it was a bit of a struggle keeping them comfortable. We attached misters to the fan pictured above to keep them cool and this did the trick. We had some friends though that weren’t so lucky and lost over 25 birds. Spring and fall are an ideal time to raise these birds, in my opinion, if you’re in the Southeast part of Texas at least. In short, take into account the weather conditions of your area.
That’s about it! If you’re on the fence about raising your own birds, I can’t recommend taking the leap! Start small and see how it goes. It’s not just a great experience but an amazing way to feed your family some healthy and humanely treated meat! Good luck!
