[County Dangler]

I thought it would be nice to a little thread on how we got on with our growers.

We started from scratch. Bare earth. No run, no house, nothing.

On a recomendation from a customer i ordered 24 hubbards from a local bloke that drives up the line and collects them when he has enough ordered. A month or so later he duely delivered them and threw a couple of extra's in.

We cut up a fridge freezer box, set up the light and installed them in the living room. This turned out to be a mistake as although it was much easier to keep an eye on them/feed them, within a week they were honking. I'll be setting them up in a shed next time.



Next job was to build a run and house. For the run i used 8' 4" posts spaced at 4m and made the run 16m x 28m. Plenty for 2 dozen chickens. I dug the fence in 1' and outwards 1' at the bottom and backfilled and did a 1' overhang at the top of the 6' fence.





Here's the house made out of posts and sheets of 8x4 osb.











For the first time ever i made something too level-i didn't make a run off for the water. Easy job to fix it though. I also made the door hole too small so had to cut that out. We also added a chicken guard and a door which was simple to set up worked lovely the whole way through.

Afetr a couple of weeks we were glad to get them out of the house and settled in. They certainly liked a munch. Afetr the first 10 days on crum we introduced a bit of growers pellet and then a bit of cut maize. Throught we stuck to 75% pellet and 25% maize with the exception of the last week where they soley had maize.



We aslo added 2 lines of electric fencing. One at 10" to stop digging and one at 5' to stop climbing. Initially we thought that the bottom one would be enough but we lost 4 to mr fox so added the higher one which did the job and kept him out. I didn't get zapped the whole way though apart from the last day when i managed to get a whack straight across the top of my head.



It turned out that the chap that supplied them was also a defra registered slaughterman and for the princely sum of £3 a bird he would come to us to kill, pluck, gut, clean and pack our birds. So we booked it in so that the birds were 9 weeks. He had a good little set up and did a great job with zero stress to the birds. and we were left with 21 of these wieghing between 4 and 6lb.



We kept 12 for us-6 whole birds and we jointed the other 6 and all the rest had been pre sold.at £2.20/lb. It worked out that each bird cost us around £6 all in so our dozen chickens cost us around £30 which i was pretty happy with. If we were to sell them all we wouldn't have been far off doubling our money.

I've got another couple dozen on order so am looking forward to the next batch.

[Stereo]

Excellent pics. Do you know the total feed consumption per bird in weight? Our best Marans and Rhodes were over 4lb last year but I reckoned on £5 each for feed up to 18 weeks. I intend to do a more scientific calculation at some point next year.

£3 per bird for processing is excellent. Did he dry or wet pluck?

[County Dangler]

Wet pluck. He brought a burco up, gave the a quick dip then hand plucked the wings and used a spinny contration to do the rest.

Processing was £3 a bird and they cost me £1 each as day olds so food worked out around £2/bird to take them to 9 weeks.

[MAK]

Interesting sums. We have just got another half dozen 4 week olds to grow on for the freezer.
W paid 2.80 € a bird off the local market and I reckon we got lucky and have a coq in the batch.    They now live in the barn and an outside fenced area they share with the layers - so no new cost to house them. They share some grains and a little pellets but geneally they get kitchen scraps and neighbours bread whilst they scratch about in the grass. It takes just a few minutes to dip the chicken in hot water  pluck it and empty it so now cost ( and the dog gets a few dinners too). I really should do the sums but the growers share the sacks of grains with ducks  and layers so it gets difficult to calculate a cost. It wold be interesting but we are happy with the size and meat quality of our last batch so it has become we are not too bothered if the total cost goes up to 5€ a bird.  People in these parts a happy to pay 3x that for good quality chicen but you can buy the cheap small ones from Aldi or Lidel ( I believe).

[Mammyshaz]

That's a great setup. The final result looks good   

[Stereo]

Burco is my plan for the next batch. Last time we spent most time trying to keep the water up to temp in a plastic bucket. Something that would hold it's temp would be ideal.

Did you hang the birds at all? We found that made a lot of difference although ours are trad breeds so maybe they need it more. I'm not sure I will hang them this year as it's too hot. Last year we did them in late autumn so it was cool in the shed.

[MikeM]

excellent post and pics, thanks.

[ladyK]

Thanks for sharing, great pics!

[County Dangler]

Burco is my plan for the next batch. Last time we spent most time trying to keep the water up to temp in a plastic bucket. Something that would hold it's temp would be ideal.

Did you hang the birds at all? We found that made a lot of difference although ours are trad breeds so maybe they need it more. I'm not sure I will hang them this year as it's too hot. Last year we did them in late autumn so it was cool in the shed.

We didn't. Matey said not to bother as they wern't old enough for it to make any difference. He just said they would be better for waiting half a day for the meat to relax. I'm having reports of the best chicken ever coming back from the folk that bought them and everyone seemed delighted with the colour and happy to pay bit more then supermarket bird. I hope they are as good once deforsted.

[Stereo]

Excellent. Some of ours have been superb, some have been a bit tough and I'm trying to work out what it is. I think our Welsummers were tough because of the strain as they were all the same. Marans and RIR have been excellent. We did some legbars and leghorns but just took the legs and breasts off to save on time. That was some lovely meat but not much of it although the CLB wasn't too bad.

Out of interest, how did you market them? I'm planning on hatching a large amount of Copper Marans, RIR, Ixworth and Welsummer hens next year from our breeding flocks which is going to leave me with a large amount of cockerels. I'm not into culling them young as I see it as a waste and am happy to not make much on them. I'm just wondering if there would be a market for a 4lb Marans or RIR bird for £8 or so as that would cover feed and give me a couple quid per bird for processing. It's just a different type of bird than a Hubbard in terms of meat distribution but I know a lot of people prefer the taste of the trad breeds. Just wondering how to find those people.

[County Dangler]

Out of interest, how did you market them?

It's pretty easy for me to be honest as I own a shop and have plenty of customers coming in through the door to tout my wares to. The chickens sold out within a day and our pigs are reserved several weeks before slaughter and i've got a waiting list. And both were priced to make a good profit. No one batted an eye lid at paying £2.20 for a quality bird. Plus we got 3 meals for a family of 4 out of 1 bird. Roast chicken dinner, chicken pie and a chicken noodle soup.

I know what your saying about traditional breeds but we weighed up the options and the hubbards seemed to tick the most boxes. My thoughts were that they would be a quicker turn around (and thus younger and more tender), better sized birds and cheaper to produce. That said though i havn't tried any traditional breeds so that was only based on assumptions. Either way, I'm happy and the folk that bought them were happy too and are wanting more so that's all that matters.

Ducks are also on my radar now...i love a good duck. I'm debating doing a batch with the next lot of hubbards as the area is big enough to dig a little pond and the ground is clay enough to hold water. A bit of research required.

[Stereo]

I'm not knocking your choice of Hubbards. For meat only, they are clearly the better choice. I'm after hens really so cockerels are a by product for me. We can eat maybe 40-50 a year ourselves but next year I'm looking at hatching 200 or so hens and given our ratios this year, that means 300 cockerels! So I need to find some way of getting the feed money back on them at least. If I could sell them at £8 with not too many costs that would make it worthwhile but I'm not sure that's going to be possible unless I can corner a market and get 20 or so customers to take 15 each over the year.

I thought of adding value by starting some kind of chicken pie business or pasties, or something so that every scrap on the bird could be used.

[County Dangler]

You won't find a bigger advocate of chicken pies then myself. But then I am a growing lad! I use a really concentrated stock to make the sauce part of the pie (make a roux and add the stock as the liquid) and it's something else. I'm not sure i could be bothered with the hygine side of things to make anything commercially. But if you can, the more you process something, the more value you add. I bet i could make 10 good sized pies with a single chicken, all with plenty of meat. It's just a case of finding an outlet. Good luck anyway.