Meat Birds

I just realized that we tend to post little blurbs on FB but have not fully finished uploading any of our posts on here. I'll see how many Ivan lets me update before he wakes up.

We're trying something a little different this year with our birds. We actually ordered 50 large breed chicks from Murray McMurray and only had one die so far. *fingers crossed* There have been some interest in meat birds so we thought we'd give it a try. We have birds we wish to cull from our flock, but as they are a lot older we have a tendency to only be able to stew them for them to have any texture that resembles meat. We started them in the house and they have now moved to my failed garlic bed, but as they are growing like mad we're going to have to move them to a bigger area fairly soon. They mature slower than the hybrids that are bred specifically for fast meat birds but they do seem to be filling in fairly quickly. They are about to be a month old but most are already feathered out and some are showing some nice meat production already. They go through food like mad, downing three quart jars full of food three times a day. With this huge food intake they also go through about two gallons of water a day. This of course means tons of lovely poo for my garden. We'll see about moving them around the gardening quadrants soon to see if they can eat some of the grasses down for us to plant. We'll keep you posted.