Finding a Feed Store

You'd think that as much as I read that finding a dedicated feed store would have been obvious, but the thought didn't occur to me until AFTER we'd taken the FrankenChickens to the Butcher. For this first batch of broilers we bought 100% of their feed at Tractor Supply. Running the numbers after stopping in to get a quote we would have been able to cut our total price per pound substantially.

To be honest $2.79 a pound raising our own chickens wasn't a good deal. For considerably less we could just go to CostCo and fill the freezer with whole chickens someone else grew. To be truly self reliant we have to get the price down to LESS than what we'd pay retail. The reality is that I have to have these systems in place before we retire if we're going to be able to continue our standard of living post jobs.

I'm going to look at feeding spent brewers grain and non-soy non-GMO feed next go round just to see what the total costs would be. I have to get a tractor built between now and next March to get them on grass to supplement feed and keep them from laying in their own filth as they're prone to do.

A Chicken in the Oven is Better Than Two in the Coop!

I'm not ashamed to admit that I was nervous about how the Cornish we raised would taste. Anything that's new always has a little apprehension involved, right? I can now say we will definitely be raising the Cornish Cross again. It tasted great, the Reds loved it. and Andrea was happy with it. We also had enough chicken left over to feed us for the week.

I have to build a tractor to move them twice a day next time, and I have to track down a place that we can buy organic non-soy, non-GMO feed in bulk as well. We may also try finishing them on spent brewer's grain as well, and see how that works out. Another proof of concept here on the farm, and moving forward we'll look to move the price per pound down as much as we can.

Finally, a Harvest!

My wife gives me a hard time because the last half dozen or so times I've gone hunting I've done exactly that hunting with no killing involved. So it felt great to come home with 137.4 pounds of meat today.

As I told the butcher, all my hesitations about raising Cornish Crosses evaporated when I saw how beautiful they looked naked... :-) I mean that honestly, the Cornish were not good looking birds when they were alive. About a third of them hadn't finished feathering out yet. We'll see how they taste.

Here's the breakdown on costs:

30 Cornish Cross Ideal nursery day old hatchlings delivered to our door: $48 (Caught a good sale.)

Feed: 14 bags at $18 per 50 pound bag, $252 (This is an area we can do better on next time.)

Butcher, vacuum seal, label, etc. $84

Total cost: $384. Price per pound $2.79. 

Takeaways: The snake losses, 3 birds, 2 chickens had wounds found by the butcher and condemned there, and the 4 birds that just died of no apparent reasons really hurt the overall price per pound. Assuming we could have kept 4 more alive and made average weight, it would have cut the price per pound by right at $0.50 per pound. That's a big deal.

The moving Salatin tractor is a must. The chickens didn't do a good job of keeping themselves clean. I've never seen chickens content to never scratch, eat laying down, drink laying down. I think being forced to move onto new grass will help considerably. 

Practice better predator control, the tractors are going to be built with hardware cloth, and we'll focus on snake proofing them each day until they're out of the danger zone.

I've got to do a better job next time breaking down feed costs. This time if anything I way overestimated our costs. Still we have to get our costs under $2.00 a pound if we want to be competitive. 

Feed costs themselves. I bought all of our feed this go round at Tractor Supply. I didn't know how much we'd need. I know there is a farm in Waxahachie milling their own non-GMO, non-soy feed for $14 a bag when you buy in bulk.

If we're going to do this it makes sense to do some geese and turkeys at the same time, then separate them as they get bigger. I think we might do a half dozen turkey's next year as well and see if we can create a market for those as well. 

Who's Afraid of FrankenChickens?

Well, we're just about halfway to putting 25 or so Cornish Cross chickens in the freezer. To date, most every time I do an internet search about anything Cornish Cross related I get nothing but bad press. They die mysteriously, they grow faster than their bodies can handle, the list goes on and on.

We've lost 3 to snakes. (How do I know they were snakes? It's pretty obvious that Mr. Snake got the fat chicken about a quarter of the way down and realized that though he'd been able to constrict said chickens, his eyes were bigger than his stomach and had to cede defeat.) In unison with the case of the partially eaten chickens, I noticed a lot of our eggs disappearing. After some research I ordered some faux eggs from Amazon. As the wooden eggs disappeared, the chickens stopped dying. Eventually I'm sure we'll find a couple of snake skins with several wooden eggs in them... :-)

The remainder of the Cornish have grown at the advertised phenomenal rate. They run around, though not nearly as much as the Ideal 236s. I do find it really strange how content they are to sit and eat, I've never seen another chicken do this. They've handled the Texas heat and an unseasonably humid summer like champs.

In the future when we raise more I think having them in a Salatin like trailer will do a lot to help them to further express their chickenhood. I wouldn't raise them with traditional chickens again. The smaller, more active chickens this week started to pick at the Cornish, causing us to separate them into two pens.

Hopefully I'll get a couple of guys at work hooked on knowing the name of the chicken they're eating.