[Womble]

I did try searching for this, but to no avail.

Has anybody kept good records of how much food Hubbards and the like actually eat when reared free range, and what the final dressed weights were?

I'm somewhat reeling from having just paid £14.48 for 25kg of chick crumb and £13.26 for the same of growers pellets at our local feed store. Now rearing layers is one thing, but I'm scared to hatch any table birds now in case they eat me out of house and home! 

Any ideas? 

[hughesy]

Find another feed store those prices are ridiculous.

[Womble]

I know what you mean Hughesy - it's not exactly chicken feed, is it!? So, I phoned our other two local suppliers to check. Results as follows, adjusted for different sized bags (I know I probably shouldn’t name and shame, but then again, why not!!):
 
Chick crumb:
 
Mackaskies, Stirling £0.70
Boquhan Estates £0.53
Russell's, Larbert: £0.58
 
Growers Pellets:
 
Mackaskies, Stirling £0.54
Boquhan Estates £0.49
Russell's, Larbert: £0.53
 
So, I did pay a little bit more than I might have done locally, but not over the odds.  I'm afraid this looks like the shape of things to come folks! 

[Andrew]

I have found if I free range hubbards they consume roughly 10 kg from day old till dispatch at about 12 weeks, and on average producing a carcase between 2-2.5kg. They are on chick crumb for the first 4 weeks then grower pellets.
I think that we should review the possibility of a buying group locally as we attemptrd previoudly at CSSA, we could discuss at AGM.

[Womble]

Hi Andrew,

I think we might be onto something for the CSSA birds. The main problem with group buying is that somebody has to store the feed and people have to collect it.  If people are already coming to collect eggs / chicks anyway, that's one problem solved at least!

So, per bird let's say £2.00 per chick plus £7.00 for food plus £1.50 for the nasty bit at the end = £10.50 per bird, = approx. £4.67 per kg.

This compares with £5.50 per kg for Tesco's Finest free range corn fed chook. (or, less relevantly 2.48 per kg for Tescos blue stripey chicken - How do they do that?!?  ).

Let's discuss at the AGM to see what we might be able to do.  However, I'll happily take two doz hubbard eggs along with the next delivery for our incubator. 

[Womble]

I have found if I free range hubbards they consume roughly 10 kg from day old till dispatch at about 12 weeks, and on average producing a carcase between 2-2.5kg. They are on chick crumb for the first 4 weeks then grower pellets.

OK, just reporting back. We ran our birds on probably too long to 15 weeks, but went easy on the feeding at times to ensure none of them developed leg problems. The final dressed weight of the hens was around 2.5kg, with the cocks coming in at 3.76 to 4kg (Wow!).

In that time, they each consumed 2.7kg of chick crumbs and 12.2 kg of growers pellets (again, Wow!).

So, although ours ate 50% more food than Andrew's, they also weighed 33% more by the end of their 25% longer lives!! Our total variable costs including bedding, electricity and professional slaughter therefore came to just over £12 per bird. So, for an average dressed weight of 3kg, that's £4.00 per kg.

For reference, a Tescos standard bird is currently £3.43 per bird, whilst 'finest' free range or farm shop birds are about £6.00 per kg, so all in all not too bad I reckon! 

Our new mobile chicken coop also worked very well indeed. The lino flor was very easy to clean out, and two of us could wheel it about without any problems so we could keep the birds on fresh ground all the time. The other big improvement we made was to buy some of these nipple drinkers from E-bay. I tried mounting them in a fixed length 2" overflow pipe with no success (you have to be able to raise them up as the poults grow), so in the end I just drilled holes in the bottom of an old salt-lick bucket, screwed the nipples in and hung it up for them. It was amazing how quickly they cottoned on to this, and it made a huge difference for minimal cost - no more soaked bedding or cleaning out mucky drinkers for us!  .

I hope that's helpful folks!

Womble.

[THE HAPPY POULTRY FARMER]

Hi my experience with hubbards on a commercial free range basis we would expect to achieve a feed conversion of 2.2 to 2.5kgs of food to produce 1 kg of body weight this would be an average conversion on a flock of 5000 birds hope this helps THPF

[Padge]

that's a really interesting post........ ......we kept a few hubbards for the table a few years back OH went to buy from Poulet Anglais     about 30 mins from us   and at the price they were then and how small they were came away with 43 birds.....didn't look that many that small lol    we never costed them out but I remember how they ate....and we kept them too long......the cockerels I recall we thought no real carcass to them so we obviously were doing it wrong.....we are currently experimenting with a few Ixworth Le Bresse and White Rocks........and at the beginning of the week acquired a trio of Indian Game  we'll see how we go

[sokel]

I am foolishly not keeping exact records but my chicks are almost 3 weeks and eat a sack of chick crumbs a week 
As i buy the layers pellets in bulk at a cheaper rate I add the crumbs and growers to the order and only pay £8 a sack for chick crumbs and £7.75 for growers pellets