The chicks are here! It’s hard to believe that these cute little fuzz-balls will get ugly so fast. If you care to read on I thought I would write a bit about how we are raising your birds. If you don’t care, I posted a cute picture at the end of this post ;)
In the beginning the chicks need a constant temperature of around 95, by two weeks they can stand temperatures in the upper 40’s at night. For the first two weeks we keep the chicks in swimming pools lined with sawdust in our garage and use heat lamps when its cool at night. Once they reach two weeks we place them in our homemade chicken tractors, which are moved daily so the birds have access to fresh pasture.
These chicks are a breed called Cornish Rock. Cornish Rocks are a quick-growing meat bird known for their fast weight gain (in 8 weeks our birds were 5-6 lb). Such quick weight gain places an immense strain on the birds. Keeping Cornish Rocks past 8 weeks places them in danger of heart attacks and leg failure, so we plan on butchering at 7 weeks. I actually have mixed feelings about supporting this breed. On the one hand, for taste and tenderness they are hard to match. However, Tyson and other industrial chicken brands have wiped our taste buds of an appreciation for the complexities of older heritage breeds. Older heritage breeds are much more hardy, are better foragers, and haven't been breed for such quick growth and poor health. For now we’ll stick with the Rocks, but in the future we might experiment.
Gus trying to grab a bird to hold. Last year I thought he would squeeze them to death, but he's gotten much more gentle this time around.
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