For the last two years I've raised broiler chickens in my community garden plot. This year I'm doing it as a cooperative project with 3 other people. We're growing 20 Cornish Cross together in the community garden. They are 7 weeks old and when I weighed one today. It weighed 7.25 lbs. We won't be processing them for 2 more weeks. Too bad because they are plenty big enough right now. We may have to change the slaughter date.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Community Garden Broilers
For the last two years I've raised broiler chickens in my community garden plot. This year I'm doing it as a cooperative project with 3 other people. We're growing 20 Cornish Cross together in the community garden. They are 7 weeks old and when I weighed one today. It weighed 7.25 lbs. We won't be processing them for 2 more weeks. Too bad because they are plenty big enough right now. We may have to change the slaughter date.
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How interesting--so they are just out there in the community garden?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you do with the chickens after processing? Do you have a big deep freeze?
yes they are just "out there". They are locked in a predator proof coop at night and fenced in during the day. This batch is 20 chickens for 4 people so 5 each to store, but yes I do have a large freezer, but if you split chickens in half you can fit more in a freezer. I'll try and post more on this project
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely plenty big :) How are you planning to do the processing?
ReplyDeleteNice birds!
ReplyDeleteYou need to be careful when the Cornish Cross reach this size. They tend to overheat (and die) very easily. I have had this happen before with nice otherwise healthy birds. I usually butcher mine at between 4 1/2 and 5 pounds. I also like to raise my birds later in the year so I can finish a few roasting birds to almost full size, usually in October. I had one bird of this kind that weighed 10 pounds dressed weight!
If you need instructions on how to process the birds there are step by step instructions at http://www.ubuilderplans.com in their Poultry 101 section.
Good luck!