Common mistakes with meat chickens

We just butchered our first ever group of meat chickens, the process overall went pretty good, but there are definitely things that we will change next time. Here are some common mistakes with meat chickens. This year we had 37 cornish crosses that we raised in a chicken tractor for 10 weeks. We ended up with an average of 3-4 pound birds, so there’s room for lots of improvement.

Brooding meat chickens in the house

We have a massive basement, so we thought we wood brood our meat chickens in the basement like we do with our laying hens. It was a big mistake, they were smelly and needed a bigger area way too quickly. The result was some of our chickens getting hurt by other chickens. Next time we’ll give them a larger space in our barn.

Using a hanging feeder for meat birds

We used a hanging feeder for our chickens when they were in their chicken tractor. The bigger chickens would eat all of the feed and the smaller chickens had trouble getting to the feeder. Closer to butcher day we started spreading out their feed on the ground (which they always foraged anyway) and it gave every chicken an opportunity to eat. We also started supplementing with spent grain from a local brewery. Next year we’ll supplement with the spent grain from the beginning, the more feed the better with meat birds.

Size of a chicken tractor for meat birds

The less birds you have in a tractor the bigger they’ll end up. Not having to fight for resources is huge. Our neighbor who bought meat birds with us had 1/3 of the birds we had and they ended up being an average of 2 pounds bigger. I don’t think I’ll have more than 20 birds per tractor next year. While our tractor was big enough for our 37 chickens, they could have used more room.

When to butcher meat birds

We butchered at 10 weeks, we thought our chickens looked big. We were very wrong. An extra 2 weeks would have helped substantially. Next year we’ll butcher at 12 weeks for bigger birds.

Plucking chickens by hand

I’m happy we plucked by hand for the experience, now we know that investing in a yardbird chicken plucker is definitely worth it. It seems hefty, but it took us 10 hours to butcher the 37 chickens, and I think we could have done it in 6 hours by using a chicken plucker.

Packaging meat chickens

I cheaped out and used my FoodSaver to package the chickens and it barely worked, I assumed it would be an easy way to package chickens because I use it to package all of the venison we process. I should have used the poultry shrink bags. I didn’t want to buy them because I thought it would be more steps, but it probably would have been way faster and worked a whole lot better. I’ll buy them in bulk next year.