Chicken rearing for meat

Hopefully Grannie Annie will come on here shortly and help you - her and Brian have raised hundred of meat birds and turkeys 

You talking about me again?  

I didn't say anything earlier, as there are always so many people answering this type of thread.  

Yes calculad, we do raise our own meat chickens.  We actually get ours from a chap in Lincolnshire.

They used to be called JA757's, and Coloryields.  He also used to raise Mastergris.  They are all good meat birds, but he sold the parent stock of the Mastergris to one of our members, but not seen him on here for a bit.

Ross Cobbs if you can get them are not bad, but a year or so ago they were having hatching problems.

We get the chicks at day old.  They go under heat lamps for 4-6 weeks depending on the time of year, then they can go outside.  The JA757's we used to grow for 10-12 weeks and the Coloryields 12-14, but now, whichever ones we get we grow to 14-16.  

They have chick crumbs for 5 weeks, then go on to rearer pellets until 1 one week culling, when they go onto plain finisher.  The reason is the chick crumb and rearer we get are medicated.  The finisher gets all the meds out of their systems, then 24 hours before culling no food, just water.  This clears out the crop which makes it a lot easier when gutting.

I will have a look for the gutting threads we have on here somewhere.

Hope this helps, if I've missed anything, please let me know.

Hello GrannieAnnie,
Many thanks for the links, detailed information and your time spent on it.
Interesting inclusion about medication.
Is disease/sickness a big problem?
I try to be organic but am not a slave to it.
C