Of all the forms of livestock, chickens put meat on your table with the least amount of time and effort. In a matter of weeks, your chicken-keeping chores are over and your freezer is full of tasty, healthful poultry. If, on the other hand, you keep a dual- purpose flock, the availability of poultry meat may be ongoing as you butcher surplus cockerels and spent hens throughout the year. Meat Classes Chicken meat may be divided into five basic classes: Rock-Cornish game hen: not a game bird and not necessarily a hen, but a Cornish, Rock-Cornish, or any Cornish-cross bird, usually 5 to 6 weeks old, weighing less than 1 pound or about 1½ pounds. Broiler or fryer: a young tender chicken, usually weighing 4 to 4½ pounds live weight, less than 13 weeks of age, with soft, pliable, smooth-textured skin and flexible breastbone; suitable for almost any kind of cooking. Roaster: a young tender chicken, usually weighing 6 to 8 pounds live weight, 3 to 5 months of age, with soft, pliable smooth-textured skin and a breastbone that’s less flexible than that of a broiler or fryer. This class of chicken is suitable for roasting whole. Stewing hen, baking hen, or “fowl”: a mature hen (10 months or older and usually a layer that is no longer economically productive) with a nonflexible breast bone and less tender meat; requires stewing or another moist cooking method. Cock or rooster: any fully mature male chicken, the meat of which is dark, tough, strong tasting, and unfit to eat. Managing Meat Birds Methods for raising broilers fall into three categories: 1. Indoor confinement involves housing chickens indoors on litter and taking them everything they eat. This method is practical for small-flock owners who don’t have much space. The goal of confinement is to get the most meat for the least cost by efficiently convening feed into meat. The standard feed conversion ratio is 2 to I — each bird averages 2 pounds of feed for every 1 pound of weight gain. To get a feed conversion ratio that high, you must raise Cornish-cross hybrids, which have been developed for their distinct ability to eat and grow. Efficient feed conversion means allowing birds only enough space to get to feeders and drinkers, and no more. If you don’t like the idea of factory farming, you can give your meat birds more room than the minimums shown in the accompanying chart, but be prepared to feed them a bit longer to get them up to weight. 2. Range confinement, like indoor confinement, involves keeping broilers in a building, but this type of building is portable, is kept on pasture, and is moved daily. Range confinement reduces feed costs, especially if you move housing first thing each day to encourage hungry birds to forage for an hour before feeding them their morning ration. On the other hand, you need enough good pasture (or unsprayed lawn) to move the shelter daily, and you must do so each day without fail. As they reach harvest size, the birds will graze faster and deposit a higher concentration of droppings, and will have to be moved at least twice a day. Chickens raised by this method take longer to reach butchering size than do those confined indoors. 3. Free range lets chickens freely come and go from their range shelter. This method requires more land than either form of confinement, because you need enough space for both a shelter and pasture for grazing (and trampling), multiplied several times to allow for fresh forage. Figure at least one-quarter acre for 100 birds. This method requires less labor than range confinement (because you don’t have to move the shelter daily) but more labor than indoor confinement (because you do have to move the shelter occasionally). Allowing the chickens to exercise creates darker, firmer, more flavorful meat but also causes them to eat more and grow more slowly they don’t reach fryer size until about 13 weeks. Because not every one is willing to raise broilers for an extra 5 weeks and not everyone appreciates the full flavor and firm texture of naturally grown chicken, free ranging is less often used for meat birds than for laying hens. Minimum Confinement Space:
Combination management involves raising birds in confinement for 8 weeks, butchering some as fryers, and putting the rest on pasture for another 4 to 5 weeks until they reach roaster size. Since feed conversion efficiency goes down as birds get older, raising roasters this way costs less than raising them entirely indoors but requires longer to achieve roaster weight. Feeding Meat Birds Provide enough feeder space that your chicks can eat at will and that those lower in the peck order won’t get pushed away by dominant birds. The general rule is to furnish enough feeder space so at least one third of your chicks can eat at a time. A confinement-fed broiler eats approximately 2 pounds of feed for every pound of weight it gains. If you raise your birds to 4 pounds, each one will gobble up at least 8 pounds of feed during its lifetime. A non-hybrid may eat twice that amount. The older a chicken is, the less efficiently it converts feed into meat and the costlier it becomes to raise. The conversion ratio starts out below 1 in newly hatched chicks and reaches 2 to 1 at about the fifth or sixth week. During the seventh or eighth week, the cumulative, or average, ratio reaches 2 to 1 — the point of diminishing returns. From then on, the cumulative ratio has nowhere to go but up, and the amount of feed the chicken eats (in terms of cost) can’t be justified by the amount of weight the chicken gains. Although the most economical meat comes from birds weighing 2½ to 3½ pounds, most folks prefer meatier broilers or fryers in the range of 4 to 4½ pounds. If you want nice plump roasters, be prepared to pay more per pound to raise them. To estimate the minimum amount of feed 100 confinement-fed chicks should eat each day, double their age in weeks. For example, 100 four-week-old broilers should eat no less than 8 pounds of feed per day. (In metric, the age of the chicks in weeks roughly equals the minimum amount of feed, in kilograms, 100 chicks should eat each day). If feed use levels off or drops below this guideline, look for management or disease problems. The Importance of Water: Regardless of your management method, provide free access to fresh water at all times. Meat birds that don’t get enough to drink eat less and there fore grow more slowly. Avoiding Drug Residues To avoid drug residues in your homegrown meat, shun medicated rations and seek out sources of non-medicated rations. Medications include low levels of antibiotics to improve feed conversion and coccidiostats to prevent coccidiosis, an intestinal disease that interferes with nutrient absorption and drastically reduces the growth rate of infected birds. If you choose to start your flock on a medicated ration, you must find a non-medicated feed to use during the drug’s withdrawal period, which represents the minimum number of days that must pass from the time drug use stops until drug residues dissipate from the birds’ bodies. If the label does not specify a withdrawal period, ask your feed dealer to look it up for you in his spec book. Where non-medicated rations are not available, scratch grains may be your only option during the drug withdrawal period. If you use non-medicated feed throughout the growing period, you’ll have to be especially careful to prevent coccidiosis. This disease is especially problematic in areas where conditions are warm and humid. Keep litter clean and dry for indoor birds, move range-fed birds frequently to prevent build-up of droppings, and keep drinking water free of droppings. Poultry Economics Several methods are used to determine the economic efficiency of producing chicken meat. Since feed cost accounts for at least 55 percent of the cost of meat-bird production, most economic indicators factor in the amount of feed used. Feed conversion ratio is the total amount of feed in pounds eaten by the flock divided by the flock’s total live weight in pounds. Hybrid broilers raised under efficient commercial methods get by on as little as 1.85 pounds of feed per 1 pound of weight gained. At home, don’t expect a conversion ratio much better than 2 pounds of feed per pound of live weight, or about 3 pounds of feed per pound of carcass. If your rate is considerably higher, take stock of your management methods. Feed cost per pound is the feed conversion ratio multiplied by the average cost of feed per pound. Determine the average cost of feed per pound by dividing the total pounds of feed used into your total feed cost. Performance efficiency factor is the average live weight divided by the feed con version ratio, multiplied by 100. In factory-raised poultry, this index hovers around 200. The higher you get above 200, the better you’re doing. Livability is the total number of birds butchered or sold divided by the total number started. To convert that number to a percentage, multiply by 100. Good livability is 95 percent or better. If your livability is above 90 percent, you’re doing as well as many commercial growers. Average live weight is the total live weight divided by the total number of birds. The industry average for hybrids efficiently raised to 8 weeks of age is 4 to 4½ pounds. If, at the end of 8 weeks (13 weeks for non-hybrids), your birds aren’t even close, look for ways to improve your management methods. One way to boost your average is to raise cockerels instead of straight-run chicks. As a general rule, cockerels weigh 1 pound mote than pullets of the same age and on the same amount of feed. Average weight per bird is the total dressed weight of all birds divided by the total number of birds. This index factors in weight lost to excess fat and inedible portions, such as intestines, feathers, heads, feet, and blood. A good average for the edible portion is approximately 75 percent of live weight. Butchering As butchering time draws near, seek out a fellow backyard chicken keeper willing to show you how to clean your broilers, or learn the procedure from a good web site or book. If you prefer not to butcher your own birds, perhaps you can find a custom slaughterer in your area who handles chickens. Next: Goats (coming soon) |