Chickens for meat sum up

I've just about completed my chickens for meat journey. All the birds but two are slaughtered, and they'll be dispatched this week. I had to give up my breeding hopes, because one of the chooks got sick with Mycoplasma Synoviae. It's a bacteria like a cold, which causes lameness and is highly contagious. It's very common in commercial flocks, and it seems likely that my chooks inherited it from their parents, and will then come down with the illness when they are under stress. Since my chooks are considerably overweight, that counts as stress, and makes them vulnerable to the infection. Once the chook comes down with Mycoplasma Synoviae, we have to kill them and we can't eat them. (We could go the vet route, antibiotics etc, but I'm not prepared to do that.) In my mind, all that work in raising the chook, and its life, and the cost of its feed, have all been wasted. I decided that rather than risking my other chooks coming down with it, I would despatch them quickly to avoid possible wastage.

So... last week was a very full on week, starting with emergency dispatch and composting of the sick chook, and then slaughtering two the next morning, and two the morning after that. It felt like we didn't get a break from the emotions that go with killing, and the exhaustion that goes with being steely, so it was a pretty heavy week. I see now that slaughtering two chooks a week is very do-able. Slaughtering five makes it feel like I'm living in a kill-fest. This week we decided to do two today and two on Thursday, so that we'll have a day's break in between. Hopefully that'll feel easier.

It takes 40 minutes to kill and process each bird. Paula and I work together for an hour and forty minutes, including some preparation and cleaning up time. It doesn't sound like much out of our day, but I really do feel exhausted afterwards and seem to need my nap. And I think it's better not to do anything else major for the rest of the day if possible. Maybe I'll get tougher eventually but that seems to be the right balance for me to manage it.

The weights of the birds ranged between 1.1kg (at six weeks) to 2.6 (the very biggest bird, slaughtered at nine weeks). We had a 2.3kg bird, but the rest were under 2kg. The final birds we did in week ten were 1.7 and 1.9kgs. If we'd done them at eight weeks I reckon they would have weighed about 1.2 - they were the smallest. Feeding them for two weeks to gain about 500g is not very efficient, I think.

So, now it's just about over, would I do it again? Definitely, yes. It gives me a true appreciation for the meat that I eat. I feel like eating a bit less of it now (very appropriate because I think I was eating too much), and what I do eat feels very precious. The homegrown chooks taste unbelievably good. Much, much better than the best biodynamic chicken we can buy. I know my chooks have a really good life, that they are well loved and pampered, have a stimulating existence full of foraging and a big variety of fresh greens to peck at. I think it would be hard to reproduce that on a commercial scale.

Next time, I think I'll do slightly fewer birds, maybe twelve, rather than sixteen. I think I'll dispatch them all between six and eight weeks, as they didn't really gain that much weight beyond eight weeks, and were much harder to kill after eight weeks as their bones became a lot tougher. Also beyond eight weeks I'm feeding them in order to maintain their body weight, which is not an efficient use of feed. That will mean killing four birds a week for three weeks. I think it'll be challenging emotionally but doable.

When they were babies, maintaining their feed and water was quite a big job, as was catching them to return them to their box at night. I think next time I'll buy a 20kg sack of starter crumble, and then when that's run out, I'll switch to my stockfeed shop recipe. Also, we now have a fenced off run, which we didn't have before. Next time, once the chooks are 2-3 weeks old, I'd like to move them out to the fenced run, ideally into a small insulated house with a lightbulb I can switch on as need. That way I can grow food in the run in advance, and I can hopefully round them up back into their house when it's cold, rather than having to catch each one individually. I've since discovered that using a broom to round up chooks works really well. I wonder if they'll be that easily rounded up as little babies, with the broom method? I would also buy a larger waterer - by 2 weeks it needed refilling three times a day!

Estimated cost of raising my chooks:
2 bottles of cod liver oil $18 each (I have most of the second bottle left ready for next time).
1 bucket of molasses $20 (I have only used one tenth of the bucket).
4 batches of my 26kg stockfeed recipe $40ish per batch
5kg bag of starter crumble $7
Roughly 10kg of homemade feed, labour intensive! $10ish?
The chooks themselves: $30 for shipping, $2 per bird (I bought 16 for me, but I also paid for Roderick's birds and his share of the shipping).
Feeder $7
Waterer $7

I estimate that to raise one chook to eating age of approx 7-8 weeks, it takes around 5kg of grain, 1.5kg of protein, and a corresponding proportion of vitamins and minerals (via seaweed, cod liver oil, molasses).

All up, not counting Roderick's birds, but including the entire shipping, it comes to roughly $300. With three deaths, I've ended up with 13 birds, which rounds out to $23 per bird. Belmores, the butcher near us, sells organic whole chickens for $30 for 1.5kgs. However, I believe my meat is FAR more nutritious than any commercial meat, in part thanks to the cod liver oil, molasses, and seaweed that I have fed them, as well as the wider range of herbs and greens they've had access to. The supplements have been the expensive components of their diet. If I just bought starter crumble and then grower crumble, it would have been MUCH cheaper, so if economy was your motivation for raising your own meat, then you could definitely do it that way.

Next time I reckon I could do it a fair bit cheaper. I would dry and grind seaweed in advance so I didn't need to buy it. I wouldn't have to buy molasses, I'd only have to buy one bottle of cod liver oil, maybe none if I dispatch sooner. I also have a contact for buying grain in bulk, so if I bought it all well in advance at the bulk price, instead of from the feed store, I'd get that cheaper.

I'm going to have a break from chicken raising for a while, and will probably raise another batch next spring. If you'd like in on the venture, let me know, and I can talk with you before I order. Sharing the cost of shipping will make it cheaper. And I'm happy to show you how to dispatch if you want to raise your own chickens and learn enroute. (Obviously this only applies to those of you in Melbourne!)

Anyone who wants to learn how to kill a chook can look here, though I ended up with a bit of a simpler set up.

Comments

[sonya]

Hello there

I've kept egg laying chickens in Darwin for about ten years now. Keeping the chickens supplied with fresh water has always been tricky and time consuming but so important for health and egg laying quality. A couple of years ago I bought an old bathroom sink from the dump shop and attached it to one of the fences in the chicken run. The sink is set an an angle so that it is always about half full but water can freely flow out when the sink is filled. Next I ran some flexible irrigation pipe from one of the watering systems we have in our yard into the sink. This watering system automatically runs three times a day for three minutes and waters our bamboo, bananas and paw paws. Three times a day the sink fills with fresh water and flushes out the old water. The water that runs out creates a puddle that the chooks scratch around in - it soon dries out and never creates a swamp. I never have to worry about water quality or the chooks running out of water (particularly when we go away) and I only clean out the sink about twice a year. The sink is about half a metre off the ground and I have a wooden step for the chooks to hop onto so that they can drink. I experimented with ponds and having the sink set down lower but the chooks would quickly fill the water with dirt and poo creating a horrid stinking mess.

From time to time our bantam hatches out new chicks and the little ones are able to use this system from about two weeks onwards. Happy to send a photo of the set up if this would be helpful.

Cheers
Sonya

[Asphyxia]

Hi Sonia,

That system sounds great - very clever. I'd love a photo if not too much hassle? U could email it to me: asphyxia@nemesis.com.au and I'll post it on my blog. Our egg layers seem to only need their larger plastic waterer refilled every three weeks. I've had to refill every couple of days with the meat chooks though. If I was looking after my meat chooks year round I'd definitely be interested in your system.

Thanks!
Asphyxia

[Kurt]

Hi,
A great description of your meat raising efforts.

I don't know if you have comfrey growing in your garden, you might find an old book on it interesting. Go to:www.soilandhealth.org/. Go to go into the Agriculture Library and look for **Hills, Lawrence D. Russian Comfrey **. Comfrey has some 25% protein and might help a lot with feeding your meat chooks. You will be asked for a contribution, but one doesn't HAVE to pay that. They have a lot of other books in there, all generally out of print stuff.

regards, Kurt who lives in Paradise Tasmania