It is kind of amazing that I even raised meat birds this year. But they did get ordered and they were raised and small that they were, they were butchered. I started with 21 birds and ended with 20, 10 males and 10 females. Jilleen and I butchered 10 and 1 hen at 9 weeks and Korleskis and Turners helped butcher the remaining 10 and 2 other hens at 9.5 weeks. We also did Turner's 3 hens that day as well.
So, I kept bad records on food this year. Like I'm not 100% on how many bags we went through. It was either 7 or 8 or 9...seriously, not good records. I won't have an exact numbers, but will do a high/low instead I think.
So the most possible I spent on food and chicks was $178.36, but I believe that includes 3 bags of food for the hens. The least possible I spent was around $140. They just got Farm and Fleet food, but it was fermented with apple cider vinegar for most of their life. They were slowed down at the beginning on purpose, but also at the end because I could not take care of them for about 2 weeks due to my foot impaling issue.
Total weight on the 20 meat birds was 78 pounds, 10 oz, which is about 1 pound more than my 15 birds did last year. The first group of males averaged just over 4.1 pounds, the second group of females averaged around 3.7 pounds. We got an additional 2 lbs, 6 oz of liver and hearts for consumption and saved the 40 feet as well.
We butchered 3 of our old laying hens and they weighed out at 10 lbs, 4 oz. The variance was crazy...the Wellsumer was 1 lb, 14 oz, one of the Black Austrolorps was 4 lbs, 10 ozs!
We kept 18 birds, giving two to the helper families. We also butchered the three additional hens which ended up around 8 lbs total.
So meat chicken totals are somewhere between $2.26/lb and $1.77. Honestly I think it is closer to the 1.77, which is right where it was last year. Hopefully I'll keep better records next year and hopefully they can grow out as well as they did last year! But again, I am very grateful to have almost 90 pounds of home grown meat ready for my family to enjoy!
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ReplyDeleteAmazing stuff! But we need a follow up post. I'm intrigued about fermenting with ACV! And also, what on earth happened to your foot??
Hi there! I didn't know you left a comment on my ramblings about chickens :) The fermenting is just simply adding ACV to the chickens food along with water to make a kind of gruel. It sits for a day or more and it makes their waste smell less when they are babies in our house, at least that is what I read and it was worth a shot! Then when they move to the garage and then outside I just keep it going as it slows their weight (due to all the water being added) and keeps them growing slower. By growing slower I avoid losses due to broken legs/burst hearts/other growth issues. I've only lost one chick each year and they were at like 3 days, so not anything I could prevent. As they get close to butchering I give them more dry food and increase the amount per day to help with weight gain at the end. This year that part didn't happen as well because I stepped on a small cut off tree and it went through my Croc and my foot so I was on crutches and very immobile for over a week. It is actually amazing how quickly it healed and all is good now, but it was seriously painful and inconvienent!
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