Deciding Which Meat Birds To Raise And Why

Over the winter of 2014-15 I started seeing Joel Salatin videos on YouTube as suggested videos to watch. If you haven't heard of him I would now suggest you do a search on him. He made it seem so easy to raise a batch of broiler chickens and turkeys (meat birds). Really everything I seen that he raises seems so simple at least using his method. The best part is it's all natural. No hormones or antibiotics. Animals living naturally like it used to be. I personally think natural food is what we should all be eating. There is to
much crap added to our food today.

So this triggered a interest and before I knew it I was knee deep in broiler chicken research. First I wanted to compare them to other meat birds. So I contacted a few people that had experience with different varieties of meat birds to get my answers. The first thing I was told is the Cornish Cross (CC) does NOT forage on the grass/bugs. They are very lazy and pretty much stay at the feeder all day. Then I had others tell me that they would forage for bugs/grass but very little. I was getting so many mixed answers and was still unsure what to believe. Then I remembered seeing a video someone made at Joel Salatin's farm and he made the comment that Cornish Cross will forage roughly 10-15% of their diet from the pasture. Turkeys will forage 40%. So I was convinced they would forage at least some.

Now that I am in the process of raising these birds I have noticed they can be trained to forage somewhat. After 3 weeks when you start feeding grower fed 12 hours on and 12 hours off. The trick is to move the tractor (chicken pin) during the off stage. This forces them to forage for food from the pasture since the feeder is empty and it works. Like Joel said probably 10-15%.

The next question I had was how they compare to the Red Rangers(RR). Red Rangers are another meat bird. I was told the RR are way better foragers. I was also told they go a little longer before butchering.  RR's go for 12-14 weeks before butchering. As where the Cornish Cross are butchered at 7-9 weeks. Otherwise you risk bird health issues like their (CC) legs breaking from the rapid weight gain. I was also told the RR do NOT get quite as big as the CC but do not have as may health issues. So with this information I decided to try Cornish Cross since they are a bigger bird. They are the same breed bird you would buy in the store or that is raise in large scale chicken barns.

Everyone I had talked to had raised their bird naturally and stressed that fresh clean water was one of the major factors to keeping them healthy. Along with keeping the brooding area clean. This is easiest done with pine wood chips. Everyday re-coated the brood area with a new layer of wood chips. This keeps them is a clean area and believe it or not there is no smell. If these tips are practiced there would be no issue without feeding medicated feeds. Some people add apple cider vinegar to the water. This helps keeps them healthy. Though some times it can be hard to find un-medicated feed. Locate it ahead of time.

Here is a video showing the daily maintenance for the chicks while in brooding area https://youtu.be/a4pH9mXxmcI just to give you an idea what's needed everyday.



I ordered 50 Straight Run Cornish Cross in May 2015. For those that don't know straight run just means they were not sexed. So there is a mixture of roosters and hens. I must mention not to wait to the last minute to place your order. Being my first time I didn't give any thought to the fact of waiting on hatch dates and they sell out fast. So get your orders in soon.
I also ordered 6 Broad Breasted Bronze Turkeys. All Hens. Joel Salatin's has a rule and it's you can raise 1 turkey for every 5 chickens. He claims the chickens teach the turkeys how to stay alive. LOL. I have heard from several people that turkeys are difficult to keep alive. From what I have read about these turkeys they are mostly white meat. Which is favored in my family.

This being my first time for either I figured I would just dive right in and try a mixture of poultry. On the 6th my turkeys came to my local post office which called me. I ran after them and told them I had more bird coming. The broilers came the 23rd of May. And my poultry project was started.