raising meat birds
Last fall my son started showing interest in incubating + hatching chickens. It went like a lot of his hobbies usually do … it became all consuming and he was all in on researching + educating himself so we went with it. Made it into a mini unit for school. He incubated and hatched some chicks, designed and built a chicken coop. He went on a field trip with my dad (who services chicken farms) to work and wrote a 3 page paper describing his experience. It was such a fun unit and we learned a lot together! The only disappointing part was all the eggs he hatched produced roosters soooo… we bought 5 laying hens this spring!
This is the chick he named Manhattan Flash – after the Johnny Cash song. LOL.
What really surprised me is that it kinda sparked an interest for me too. I began to research and think about what it might be like to try and raise some meat birds on the farm this spring and summer. And honestly this is kinda out of character for me. I’m not a big time animal lover. I’m not the farmer of the family and I really don’t need any more chores or jobs, but for some reason I just wanted to try and see if I could do it.
So I purchased 12 meat birds from our local farm store + came home with 20 extra… LOL. Through a ton of trial + error, I’m proud to say that I raised 27 meat birds for my family over the last 12 weeks and they are headed to the butcher later this week.
I thought I would share a few pics with you of the chicken tractor we built! I’ll have to share some more about the lessons I learned and the things I’ll change if we decide to do this again next spring + summer, but for now here it is!
And now I’m wondering have any of you raised meat birds for your family!?
