Well, my wife and I are getting tired of the quality and consistency of chicken at the store (along with just about everything else).

We currently raise ducks and chickens for eggs, 2 goats which are being bred now with a Boer to make meat goat kids next fall, and then milk the goats out from there.  

Our next step this spring is going to be meat chickens, with the possibility of bees (not sure on this one yet).

We plan to purchase approximately 5-10 chickens every time we make it to town (60-120 miles depending on which town) every week or so from the time the chicks start coming in until they no longer stock them.  

Unsure exactly which we plan to get yet, but we get all the normal birds here.  

Cornish and Cornish Rock crosses plus all the normal egg layers.  

From my readings its says that Rhode Island Reds, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Barred Rocks and a couple others make good combo birds.  We only need 2 or 3 egg layers, so that is not a big deal.  

We are a family of soon to be 4, eat a good amount of chicken, wild game, some beef and some pork.  Mostly chicken and wild game.  Not sure if we are going to eat one of the goats next fall or sell them.  

We have about 1000 square feet that we can dedicate to making the pens as needed.  I plan to make a few so that we can continue to rotate them through.

What would the recommendations be for birds?  

What age would the birds be butchered?  

Cost is obviously a concern because I don't want it to cost a ridiculous amount more than store bought, but I am willing to pay for quality.  

I have also heard that the meat birds that grow real big are also real stupid and can die easily, so what steps should be taken to curve that problem.  

We are also considering getting some banties to raise as basically cornish game hens to be roasted whole.

Plans for the full sized birds would be boneless, skinless breasts for the freezer and can the leg and thighs for chicken stock and soup meat and casserole meat.  Maybe keep a couple bigger birds for  roasting.  

Thanks for any thoughts.

Marcial

I would buy them all at once, say 50 or so, and raise them as a group as opposed to trickling in a few new birds every week.  Trying to juggle feed, brooders, etc. like that would be nightmare.

Raise them by themselves, not with your other chickens.  If you go with Cornish Crosses, they are voracious eaters, and will out-compete your other birds for any available feed.

We butcher Cornish X's at 6-7 weeks.  Beyond that, the meat starts getting tougher, the feed:meat ratio starts declining, and the birds themselves can start developing leg problems, etc.

For your Cornish hens, just butcher some of the Cornish X's at 3-4 weeks instead of 6-7.  Banties are going to end up being more bone than meat.

Make sure you have enough freezer space to store 50 chicken's worth of meat.  We bought a small freezer ($250-ish) to dedicate to the task.

Make sure you have a decent brooder area set up before you get the chicks.  If they get cold, they'll huddle together and some will end up suffocating.

Raising the Cornish X's is kind of fun, IMHO.  The seem to have some personality, though it's mostly based on "feed me something, right now".  Do not wear flip-flops into the pen or they will try to eat your toenails.

Juggling the around was definitely a concern, along with the added expense of crossfencing it all with different shelters. If its only 6-7 weeks that should also give us extra time to make two batches. One when they first come in and another near the end of the season. They wee $.99 a piece last year.

Some good info here.

After decades of looking for the mythical dual purpose bird, we settled on layers for laying and broilers for eating.

We usually get 50 every spring, 6 weeks and in the freezer.
Have been getting them via 4H, for under $0.50 a pop.
Like them better than the Cornish Xs

We're looking at doing the same thing this spring.  This is a good time to start planning.  I really want to fabricate a plucker.

I am prepared for a slightly higher cost. We are also cutting as many unnecessary expenses to help with the cost of everything. I would rather have the higher quality food. I am also writing off the cost of getting the pen put together simply because i consider it an investment.

We have raised both combo birds and straight cornish x birds for meat.  I will not waste my time with any of the combo birds since I started raising the cornish X chickens 3 years ago.  We raise 40 to 50 every spring and it is the best chicken I have ever ate.  They are a dirty bird and you must regulate there food but well worth the time and effort.  Usually it takes 8 ish weeks to get around a 9 or 10 pound live weight bird, This will give you about an 8 pound dressed chicken.  In my short experience they start putting on fat and  quit gaining meat after about 10 pounds. I would also recommend buying males over females, the males grow much quicker.  
Last year my cost was at $2 a pound.  I regulated the food heavily last year and that cut my cost down from $3 a pound the previous years.


eta:
That was $2 a pound butchered.  

We come in under $1/lb, live weight, including birds, feed, elec for heat, etc, with the broilers, running 6-9lbs live wt at 6 to 7 weeks old.
I am much happier  ith the broilers than the Cornish Xs.

I grew up doing a flock of upwards of 100-150 each summer.  This year, we did two smaller flocks, staggered about 4 or 5 weeks apart, one group that ended up at about 20, the other about 30.  That was a decent number for us to process at one time (just two of us).  We might try 3 batches of 40ish each this next year.

We streamlined the process from the all day, 5+ people ordeal of my youth.  I no longer pluck them--I skin each bird.  This cuts the handling time way down, and avoids the whole hot water soak before the plucker. That was incidentally the least appealing part of processing to me--the smell of that water kept me from wanting to eat chicken for days afterward.

After drawing and skinning each bird, I seperate the breast from the back/legs.  These all get dripped into ice water bath. The wife then thoroughly cleans each part, and it's off to fresh cold water.  From there, we fill the roasters and start cooking the meat.  The meat is not fully cooked at this stage, but it makes it easy to peel off the bones and fill canning jars.  They are then processed in canner for storage, and fully cooked at that time.  No freezer necessary.

We got over a quart of straight meat per bird, though I prefer canning in pints for later use.  Also, about every 7 or so birds yielded approximately 5 or 6 quarts of badass chicken stock.  

Our system gives us  50 birds consolidated into a shelf that now requires no additional energy, with a shelf life longer than freezing.  I have thought I might pluck some for the freezer next year, but I really haven't missed whole birds, so we probably won't.  

Good luck, you will enjoy it

Thanks for the updated responses. Working on the plans now and will try to keep this thread updated as we go along.

Chickens are cheap and easy. They payout on them is quick with Cornish crosses. We do 30-40 meat birds a year. Feed, water and clean the pen up. Clean them all out in a day.

Bees are a little more complicated and the startup can cost a little. But beekeeping is rewording, very interesting and really fun. It may take a long good season or go into the second season before pulling honey and wax.

We decided against bees this year. We will not have the extra cash.

We looked into the Cornish x's and also found a red ranger broiler at Murray McMurray hatchery. They mature in 12 weeks and have a better heat tolerance which I know is a problem my inlaws have had with the Cornish crosses. We like the idea of the as a good medium between the Cornish crosses and the egg layers which are 20 weeks. We will see how it goes.

I also have a few more questions about final pen size. I printed off the instructions from Murray McMurray about getting the chicks started but it did not have a recommend pen size per bird at maturity.  We plan to get 25 early this spring and then order some more in August or September to get us until next year. How big should the pen be for 25 birds?

That's not as straightforward a question as it might seem.  Will they be able to free range at all, or be penned all the time?  If they must be penned because of predators or other reasons, do you have enough space to do the "tractor" thing (a moveable pen you can rotate to fresh pasture every few days)?  If you can't do either of those and must stick with a permanent run, I personally wouldn't be comfortable with anything less than around 12x20 or so.  Yes, you can probably cram them into a smaller area, but it will be turned into to either mud or concrete, depending on the weather, within a few days.  Moving them around lets gives them access to fresh bugs, grass and weeds every few days, plus you get to distribute their donation to the land's fertility more evenly around your pasture/field/yard.

It will be a permanent pen. The area is about 20x40. We don't get a lot of grass that grows here. Very rocky, unforgiving soil. Not enough room to make a tractor work. We would also be able to throw straw, hay, and other organics to the pen and clean out as needed. We also get very little moisture, so it doesn't allow much to grow

Also, predators - foxes and hawks - are a concern, but we have not had problems with them with our chickens and ducks other than the Ravens getting to the duck eggs when they lay them outside their boxes. We will take measures to prevent birds from getting to the meat birds.

Done right, I think these chickens could help improve that soil.

Maybe, maybe not.  20x40, you say?  Is that all pretty much open area, and more or less a rectangle?  A 10'x10' tractor, or maybe two, could be moved around every couple of days within that area.

If you weren't too aggressive about cleaning up, and instead just moved the tractors around, the debris from the straw and hay, mixed in with the chicken manure and what soil the chickens will root up, will break down pretty quickly and turn into some pretty rich soil.

That's more of a problem, and has a lot of impact on how fast the above chicken gunk will break down.  Any chance for irrigation?  City water or well?  Without some water, the debris will probably just "mummify" and take forever to break down.  But hosing it down or setting up a couple of sprinklers on the areas the chickens aren't currently on, plus maybe a little raking, would help immensely.

A couple of seasons of this and you'd probably be able to grow some nice grass, or maybe something fast-sprouting like wheat.  Further rotation of the tractors would get that eaten and ground up by the chickens, to their benefit and eventually yours.

Think of them as a tool, not just a food source.  It does take some "time & trouble" investment on your part to manage them as such, but done right you're getting more for your money from every flock you raise.

All that being said, I know some folks just want to raise a few meat chickens without all the hassle, and I get that.  I'm just kinda cheap, and like to wring every last bit of utility out of anything I raise.

We are on city water. The area we would use is rectangle, open, below the duck pen, and has a row of elm trees that get watered when we flush the duck pond. We also pay a little extra in the winter to offset the summer usage. Not a huge deal though. $39.24 flat rate for 16,000 gallons, then $2.10 per thousand after that. Most we used last year was 20,000. With a small garden and more chickens, plus a few more trees, I expect to hit 30,000 this year.

I can bear that cost to help the property.

You can get into bee keeping very cheaply with a home made top bar hive.  Something like this.

Next to nothing to build the hive.

Only actual expenses might be a smoker ($20), Tyvec painters suit, rubber gloves and 5 gallon paint strainer net (for the veil) from lowes/HD ($15) and a package of bees (usually $70-$80).

If you're really pressed to save or not in a rush, you can even skip buying the bees and build some "bee traps" to catch a swarm or two later in the season.

Brass tacks.. you are never, ever, going to get a more efficient 'protein per dollar' than a farm raised chicken on sale.  The grocery stores will beat you, any time, with .89 per pound chickens.  You can''t raise a bird for that price.

You lose, again, with your farm raised chicken, when you butcher it and toss it in a freezer.  Now, you need some method toe preserve the meat, protect it from freezer burning and maintain its nutritional value for tough times. You are one blown-breaker, or loss of coolant in a compressor, away from total loss of your time, money and investment in a home-raised bird.

I tried, and failed, to raise meat birds and stopped trying to convince myself that they were a good idea.

I buy farm raised, store-bought, chickens on sale 3-4 times per year.  I buy 8 to 10, whole, frozen, when I see them on sale.  Most go in to the freezer for grilling, boiling, baking.

Once the freezer has been reasonably filled, I cut the others in to pieces (bone in), raw pack them, and can them.

They can sit, with no energy input required, for 2-3 years at .89 per pound and about 1.00 per jar in cost.

If SHTF, I have gallons of chicken sitting there, patiently waiting, in a closet.

I promise you, I will not be able to complain about the farm raised versus home grown flavor if they are ever needed to be used as intended.

TRG

All true... but I still raise them

Part of it is just my stubborn, self-sufficiency gene.  I just like doing things for myself when possible, and knowing first-hand that I have the skills to do it if there's ever a real need.  Raising chickens ain't rocket science, but there are some aspects of it where experience still pays off.  How do I keep their water from freezing in winter?  Why are my hen's backs all naked and scratched up?  Maybe not so much with a herd of Cornish X's, but still...

They also turn ticks, spiders, tomato hornworms and caterpillars into meat and, in the case of layers, eggs.  They gift us with a plentiful source of high-octane fertilizer, valuable to those of us who try to minimize chemical inputs to our gardens. Setting up temporary fencing in an area and confining a small flock in there for a couple of weeks is also a great way to prepare a new garden bed without having to till or hand-turn tough sod.

None of these are terribly compelling reasons for home-raising on their own, but taken together they level out the store vs. home argument a bit.  In the end I probably just do it because I enjoy it.

ETA: You can also defray some of your costs if you have a market to sell a few.  I sell processed birds for $8 or so each, and silkies (to the Asian market) for $15. Of course, check local laws, blah blah blah...

We talking about the ability and infrastructure for Meat chickens (Cornish X's) or just Egg Layer or Dual Purpose?

My current flock is approaching laying-age.  Barred Rocks.  Purchased online from McMurray and they threw in 'one free for fun' chick.  That 'one free' was a cute top-not little gal.  A Turken ... German breed.  I was curious what kind of eggs whe would lay... until the other morning when she began crowing...

I will now be raising Egg-Layers (Barred Rocks) crossed on to a Turken Dual-Purpose breed.  

TRG

OP's post is about meat birds, and I agree that from a strictly economic standpoint you can buy 'em cheaper than raise 'em.
Another drawback is that you really can't practically raise them yourself from "scratch".  You're still basically tied into buying chicks to raise into meat birds, and the price of chicks is pretty right now.  I truly wish I could find such a thing as a real "dual-purpose" bird, but from what I've seen most of those billed as such simply don't play either role nearly as well as the breeds raised specifically for each.

IMHO, an efficient Food intake to Calorie output is best achieved by a quality egg layer.  90 calories per day of consumable protein vs an 'all in' meal of a single hen.

Dual purpose is a brass ring that we all chase, and probably shouldn't.  As Americans, we are accustomed to plump, juicy, large, tender chicken pieces.

TRG

I know it can come cheaper from the store. Not arguing that. But I ENJOY doing things my self. It's as much as a hobby as a way of life. There are a few of us here in town that are working at almost an informal community gardening idea. We also are raising milk goats.  Better for me, was to raise and is better for the kids to learn life skills than sit in front of a TV all the time. I also build dog houses, hunt for our own food, and various other things that I could probably buy cheaper. It's still fun, and have fun trying to get food when truckers go on strike (happened in the early 90's here). We also can and plan to can the chicken as well.

From your opening line, "my wife and I are getting tired of the quality and consistency of chicken at the store ..."

A home raised meat bird will be lower quality and have less consistency than a store bought bird.

You mentioned the price of a home raised vs. store bought.  Expect to pay 3-5 times MORE for a home raised bird per pound of meat.

Also, "We plan to purchase approximately 5-10 chickens every time we make it to town (60-120 miles depending on which town) every week or so from the time the chicks start coming in until they no longer stock them. "

In my experience the 'chicks in the store' will not be meat birds.  They will be Eggers or Dual purpose.  Meat birds are very specific breeds that require special care and feeding to produce meat.  I've never seen a Cornish for sale in a feed store.

Cornish 'meat birds' reach their max weight at 6 weeks.  A 'Dual purpose' will take 6 months to reach maturity.  If we use your math, you will be looking at 5-10 chicks per week, for 18 weeks?  You really plan to have 90-180 chickens in your yard before you start butchering them sometime in mid-winter?

Your math doesn't work.

"Cost is obviously a concern because I don't want it to cost a ridiculous amount more than store bought, but I am willing to pay for quality. "

You are going to pay substantially more and produce substantially less with home-raised meat birds.  The Duals are a joke, you won't get anything close to Pilgrim's Pride style cuts from one.  You will have a tough, stringy, thin piece of boot tough breast.  You might ... might...get 2-3lbs of 'meat' from a dual that has been walking around free-ranging and chasing bugs.  

Get some Barred Rocks, or Red Stars and enjoy the eggs.  If a hen gets sickly, pluck her and boil her.  Watch the stores for sale on chicken and can it.

Or, hell, be 'me' circa 2010 and ignore the guys ... like Feral and Midmo ... who have been raising food for decades. Order some Cornish, feed them all the feed required, watch them shit out most of that expensive feed, lose a few to paste-disease as chicks, raise the rest for 6 weeks, lose 1-2 to joint damage (the massive weight gain is a problem).  Watch a couple of them decide to peck a third one to death...why?  Who knows.  Mull over the carcass and try NOT to calculate what that just cost you.

Watch them simply 'swat' expensive feed on to the ground because they have nothing better to do than waste it.   Why do they not eat it?  Who knows?  Try not to recall what that special feed (yeah, they require different feed...that costs more) cost per bag.

Pat yourself on the back when you butcher them and ignore the cost per pound for the lumpy, tough, bird that you've been trying to pick clean of all those damn feathers that they warned you about.  Enjoy the look on the faces around you when you present them with 4 bucks a pound drumsticks that look like they came off a cat and have the stringiness of chewed rope...

But, hey, it's a discussion and who am I to discourage you?  I ignore those other two guys (above) all the time.  Hurts worse each time I do it.

TRG

Wisdom.

I can barely justify layers - it certainly isn't a money or time saving endeavor... like most here it's more about maintaining (an illusion of) self-reliance.

The 'reasons' for raising a home-meat bird.  There is only one:

You want to control the chemicals in that bird.   You want to know that it is hormone, vaccine, toxin, free.

Price and quality of meat can NOT be a factor.

If you are growing them solely for control of their contents, and you don't care about price or quality (tenderness, juiciness) then home-raised meat birds are a good choice.

TRG

Same here.  I have 18 hens right now.  Barred Rocks.  

I raised Red Stars and kept them long after I should have butchered them.  They were producing 1 egg, per hen, per day for a while.  

They don't like to sit though.  Rooster was a cross-bred game, he tried, but, no chicks.  

I added some Game hens to try and get chicks.  No luck.  To make things even worse the Games lay an egg once or twice per week, the other 5 days per week they are just eating money.

I am looking to find a sustainable flock that will raise some chicks (Barred will sit a nest, Games were supposed to but didn't..) that I can use to produce 3-5 eggs per day.  Once the flock is producing chicks, I can rotate out any of the 1.5 year old hens that have stopped producing.

I built a dedicated coop, with two attached runs.  I spent juuuust under 1000.00 on the coop and run (50x20').  I want to cut my flock in half.  They are still too expensive to feed.  Too many foxes, owls and hawks here for free ranging.

TRG

We've pasture raised Cornish and a few Poulon Rouge for years.
We use a Salatin style chicken tractor. If you don't know who he is, you need to.
We also pay to have them butchered. We cleaned for a while, even had a plucker. Too much trouble.

A pastured bird is superior to any .89 cent/ pound protein medium you'll get in a store.
If you are the kind of person who just slamms down cheap protein, too bad for you.

I agree for the most part... except for the 'quality' part.  I do think our home-raised birds taste a bit better than bland, store-bought (not local-farm bought) chickens.  You earlier mentioned consistency, too, which I also agree with.  We get big ones, medium ones, pretty small ones, all raised from the same age with the same feed at the same time.  But, if you don't let them go too long, texture and taste are still better - at least in my mind.

And there lies the rub.. "in my mind".  I'm perfectly willing to admit that it's possibly just a trick I'm playing on myself, e.g. "I raised it so therefore it tastes better".  But in the end, it doesn't really matter... just like whether you really have a headache, or just believe you have a headache... your head still hurts either way.

With straight meat birds, there really isn't much opportunity for the meat to be much different from the mass-produced versions.  At least in my experience, Cornish X's are poor foragers; they like feed store crumble, and the more of it the better.  If you try and pasture 'em, they sit around in a group and wait for you to come up with the feed bucket.  They may get off their lazy asses long enough to waddle around in pursuit of a particularly slow grasshopper, but what they take in through foraging is certainly not enough to really affect the meat quality.

And yet I say they do taste better.  I attribute it to just being generally healthier and happier overall; they're raised humanely in a clean, comfortable environment, and I do believe that has an effect on the meat quality in the long run.

Laying hens are an entirely different story.  So different, in fact, they may as well be a different species, as far as husbandry goes.  These do benefit from free-ranging; just cracking open a farm-fresh egg next to a store-bought version is enough to see that there really are differences, and it's not just the yolk color.  Layers are worth it, to me.  And it's actually starting to make economic sense for them... store eggs are going for around $2.50/dz. here right now, and the layers forage enough to make a noticeable difference in the feed bill during spring/summer/fall.  Ours also "forage" during the dead of winter, eating garden scraps that we pack up and freeze in the fall for just this reason.  All that gunk that comes out of the KitchenAid vegetable grinder when we can tomato sauce in the summer - seeds, skins, everything else in there that isn't juice - gets packed into plastic cups and frozen, then de-cupped and stuck in cheesy plastic grocery bags for the winter.  Since our freezers (3, at last count) are rarely completely full, the scraps help add frozen "ballast" to the freezers that actually helps them run more economically, and the chickens absolutely love a few mouthfulls of thawed out tomato remnants when the temps are dropping and the snow is blowing.

Dammit, didn't mean to write a book! tl;dr, I know.

The canning scraps is a great idea.  Coming up with alternative feed sources is a big factor in making layers not just economically viable but also actually sustainable.  I love the eggs we get - our black copper marans lay some awesome dark brown eggs - but I really chafe at the amount of feed I have to stock.

ETA:  I wanted to add that our compost pile "suffers" because nearly all of our kitchen veggie scraps go to the hens already.    Or maybe I should say, the compost pile doesn't get the kitchen scraps until it's been hen "processed".

I absolutely believe that frugality is one of the cornerstones of self-sufficiency.

Well,

This generated a lot of responses.  

We are heavily leaning toward the Red Rangers from Murray McMurray for the meat birds.  We are planning to make two orders, one this spring and one this fall.  The amounts will probably be about 25 birds each time.  I have butchered many animals, so that is not big deal for me.  I am sure it will take a couple to get it figured out, then it should be smooth sailing from there.  

We have Silver Laced Wyandottes and Americaunas for laying eggs.  We also have a Rock/Bantam cross rooster that came from my in laws.  We also plan to get about 3 Black Australorp hens and one rooster this spring.  My inlaws have a rooster, and I love the looks of that bird, and he is gentle to boot.  Locally we can also get the Cornish X's, but my wife has experience with them, and we are trying to avoid them if at all possible.  

My in laws also raise their own turkeys for eating.  I am not sure of the cost, but they are BETTER than store bought, hands down.  Easily as juicy and tender, and no hormones added - win, win win.  I am not sure how this will not translate to meat chickens as well.  

I am not counting the cost of the set up because over a couse of several years, it will come out to peanuts anyway, just like reloading, and buying specialty tools.  If I tried to factor in the cost of every item besides the feed, I would go crazy trying to make the math work.  I also have access to locally grown corn, and am currently trying to make a cracker so the chickens and goats can eat it.  This will be mixed with grower feed to add to the meat birds.  Our animals also get fed milk from the goats.  The farm this year is going to have oats and barley as well, so once I figure out how to crack the corn, I plan to buy a few hundred pounds of feed this fall - enough to get us until next fall - and make my own COB - at about 1/5 the cost of buying commercial feed at the store.  

We currently spend about $60 a month on chicken lay pellets, plus they get a bit of hay and some scratch grain.  This also feed the ducks, which we eat the eggs from.  With about an average of 5 eggs a day total, that's 150 eggs per month, or $.40 per egg.  I can get a dozen eggs for $1.50 at our friend's house, or $1.89 at the grocery store.  I know it is more expensive.  It tastes better, I know what's in it, and I can keep on raising them myself.  I like the idea of self sufficiency.  Milk is also cheaper at the store, but I like the goat's milk, its better for me (dietary issues), and it comes out daily for most of the year.  We just have to figure out how to make the breeding schedules work out in our favor to have a milker all the time.  I know antelope and deer come out more expensive than buying hamburger, but I like it better than beef, its leaner, and its healthier because of less saturated fats and such.  We also can this.  Heck, I even have some mountain lion we are planning to can if the weather will get cold enough so we can get it done without getting the house too hot.  

I am trying to figure out how to make a tractor work.  I understand the concept of it, but with limited space, uneven ground, and obstacles, I am not sure it it will work or not.  

Again, I don't know what else I would do with my free time if I didn't keep going.  I know this is ARFCOM, but I can't survive most things without other preparations besides guns

+1

Penn and Teller would make a great episode about this subject....oh wait..they did.

For me, I like pan cooked, pecan encrusted, salmon fried in ghee.  Cheap protein that I am just slamming down, I know.  I don't harvest the pecans, churn my own butter, or catch the salmon with my bare hands ... all store bought, but, just 'slammin down cheap protein'..right?

One of the best flavored chickens I ever ate was a Red Star that my dog killed.  Seriously, it was the tastiest shoestring quality chicken I've ever eaten.  I still wouldn't raise it to eat for meat if SHTF.

I've poured Canadian Mist in to expensive whiskey decanters and given it to people to 'sip ONLY if you like fine whiskey...'  ...never fails that they fawn all over it.  

The emperor has some mighty fine clothes, but hey ... I'm just a cheap protein slammer.

Let's camp.

TRG

I admire you enthusiasm, but, you have soooo many contradictory statements and expectations in that post ... I just... well.

Two orders per year, maybe?  25 each, maybe?  McMurray has a 25 min and not all breeds are available every month.

Americaunas for eggs?

A home-raised turkey is juicier than a commercial?  a 2.00 turkey injector will add pints of 'juiciness' to any turkey..miracle, i know...

Make a corn cracker so chickens and goats can eat it?    Both eat whole corn, no issue.

'make a cracker'...a hand cranked mill is under 25.00, shipped, amazon.

Add corn to meat-grower ... ?  Wut?  You plan to reduce the protein to a protein craving bird by adding a low protein corn crumble..?

You plan to buy ' a few hundred pounds of feed this fall'..  So 3-4 bags of whole corn outta do ya?

"antelope and deer come out more expensive than hamburger" .. how so?  I've killed three this Fall.  Dried, canned and fried them all.  Each weighed (it's Texas) 70lbs after deboning.  30quarts of canned venison, 15 lbs jerky, plus backstraps...  I hunted my own property, spent 1.00 each per bullet and drove about 15 miles, total, to harvest them.

Again, I admire your plans, but, damn.

TRG

Yes - trying to make things on my own, figure stuff out, experiment, have fun, learn something. I work 4 on with 4 off and no overtime. As for the cracker, I actually may have that figured out with an old cone crusher. I talked to McMurray today. Hunting license and deer and antelope tag run me over $250 total. Plus some gas money, butcher paper, and only 75 pounds of meat total, it comes out more expensive.  But i enjoy it. This isn't Texas with a 3 deer limit. We have to pay to apply, pay for the tag, drive a ways to get our deer on public land. If you would have bothered to read my posts before, you would know that I live in a town. I can buy corn for $7/100 lbs. I feed 200-250 lbs per month of commercial feed per month.

I have taken advice in this thread and tried to build upon that lil changing from buying chicks weekly (which I can get at the feed store) to getting a couple large batches instead. Also, the tractor idea, and going to a specific bird. I had no intentions of making this an argument. I was hoping to keep it positive, but that is not happening right now. Thank you for that.

AND THANKS TO THE OTHERS FOR THE POSITIVE WORDS.

And yes, americaunas for eggs. We got 6 eggs today from 6 chickens in January.  Averaging about 2 eggs every 3 days from the 3 SLW and the 3 americaunas.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm trying to help you avoid some of the same mistakes that I made when I began here in this forum about four or five years ago.

I had some very unrealistic expectation, ideas and plans.

Countless hours wasted, money flowing like water, and all because I could not slow down and listen to some of the old hats (not my own inner voice) and stop shooting myself in the foot.

I learned to stop telling people what I planned to do, and instead, focused on asking how to do it.

I'm glad you listened to me about the weekly chicken purchase, so there's that, at least I can point to and say, "glad you listened..."

TRG

Actually the first few posters should take credit for buying only once or twice.

Go back and read the first few responses.  I am also hoping this may help the ground here, among a few other things, including buying the exact chickens at the store when you were telling me it couldn't be done, after I already posted that feed stores had them last year. And the cost of deer meat. That, sir, is argumentative.  

Hopefully it will stay positive from here.

Going to waste a bunch of gas and chase some big kitty cats now

Have fun.

TRG

I'm very new to this so take that into consideration

I raised two groups of meat birds last year, 12 each time,  Cornish crosses and red rangers. I just have a suburban backyard.

I fed them half commercial feed and half sprouted whole grains. They eat a ton. They are filthy savages also.

In the end I'm unimpressed with their texture and taste. I raise New Zealand rabbits, saxony ducks, and had toulouse geese and MUCh prefer all of them to the chickens.

I have a couple barred rocks for eggs, when my saxony females start laying I'll decide if I like their eggs better if I do I won't add do to the chickens, otherwise I'll add a couple new ones each year.

For white meat I'd eat a rabbit every week. Delicious and super easy and cheap to raise. Less than $2 a pound of meat of done right and totally self sustaining unlike cross bred meat chickens.

The duck and goose is incredible tasting also. Same, I can self sustain and breed my own as I want unlike cross bred chickens. Plus no noise of a rooster.

They are fun to watch and hold etc. Meat chickens not so much.

The other big factor for me for rabbits and ducks is from a preparedness standpoint I can raise and slaughter as needed. No need for tons of freezer  space for large amount of animals. Keeping less than a dozen of each in the freezer is plenty and I'll have more long before I run out.

I may try meat chickens again, but I'm in no rush. They didn't do anything for me.

Thanks for that input. We have the ducks, and are hoping for ducklings this spring.  Rabbits are out due to the wife not wanting to eat them. We will see how it goes.

If you haven't heard of or read about fermented feed, check it out.

My wife and I raised two batches of meat birds in our backyard last year. For the second batch we used fermented feed, which is basically soaked meat bird crumble feed with Apple Cider Vinegar (The real kind, with the mother) added in. In a few days the mash starts to smell like sour dough. There are tons of benefits to fermented feed but the most obvious is probiotic enzymes. The effect this has on a Cornish Cross' digestive system
is pretty remarkable. I don't think commercial meat bird feed has any probiotics in it, and the Cornish Cross really needs it. On dry food, their poop looks like a wet version of what they ate, and it's always runny and really smelly.
With the fermented feed, they had normal looking chicken poops that weren't obviously more smelly than a healthy laying hen's poops. They were also more active, and drank less water. Cornish Cross' on regular crumbles seem to have perpetual diarrhea that of course leaves them dehydrated, hence the crazy amount of water they consume.
The birds also completely feathered out with full, clean feathers. They didn't look elderly and were fully mobile when butcher time came.

Feeding fermented feed really changed my opinion of raising Cornish Crosses. They lacked all of the negative traits people typically assign to commercial breed meat birds.

There's a huge thread about it in the meat bird section of the backyardchickens.com forum.

Thanks a lot for that info.