Spring Chickens 2014 Final Stats

We finally had a chance to compile the final numbers on our spring batch of chickens, so we wanted to put the numbers out there in case anyone besides us would find this kind of stuff useful.  Be forewarned: this is a data-heavy post!

Heres the pretext: we got 27 chickens from McMurray Hatchery on May 5.  The box of fluff that arrived in the mail contained 10 Cornish Cross Roasters (the slightly slower-growing version of the Cornish Cross), 9 Pioneers, and 8 Eggers.  For the Eggers, we ordered a Red Star, a Rhode Island Red, a New Hampshire Red, a Columbian Wyandotte, a Black Star, and an Easter Egger; two free rare breed "mystery chicks" came along as stowaways, which weve now figured out are a Silver Leghorn rooster and probably another Easter Egger. 

We had to cull one of the Pioneers at eight weeks, so we were left with 18 meat chickens.  We found a new source of organic feed, which, combined with the better conversion ratio of the Roasters, brought our cost of production down quite a bit from where it was in the fall.  We didnt keep the meaters and the eggers separate, so we had to make some assumptions about how much of feed they consumed.  After about three weeks, the Eggers made up about 15% of the total chicken weight, so we assumed they were eating 15% of the food. In reality, they probably ate less than that. But with that assumption, the final price came out to $4.93/lb, or $2.12/lb (30%) less than in the fall.  Considering how excited Katie gets about a 30% off coupon at Kohls, this chicken should make her positively ecstatic!  Heres the breakdown:

For what its worth, changing the assumption of feed consumption from 85% to 95% increases the price to $5.35/lb, so still quite a bit better than our fall batch.  Comparing to the fall, we also benefited from cheaper chicks ($2.38/each vs. $3.77/ea) and warmer temps (less electricity for the heat lamp).  Had we been lucky enough to be able to process the chickens in our own backyard, hatch them from our own eggs, and realize that hardware stores also sell grit, but in 50 lb bags (aka, construction sand), we could have cut our costs to a best-case scenario of $3.71/lb.  We had both the Roasters and Pioneers on pasture (in a tractor) for multiple weeks at a time and increased the ratio of kitchen scraps (and bathroom spiders) in their diet toward the end, but clearly the main cost driver is the feed.  Well be embarking on a mission shortly to decrease the feed costs by growing much of our own protein, so stay tuned!

The other interesting thing about raising multiple types of birds side-by-side is a final weight and growth-rate comparison.  The Cornish Cross is far and away the fastest growing breed, but we were curious...how much heavier are they than other meat breeds? And just how fast do they grow?  We butchered at about 10.5 weeks, and the roasters ranged from 7.7 to >11 lbs (the top bird maxed out the scale).  The Pioneers were between 4 and 5.7 lbs, which was less than the Rangers we had in the fall (despite McMurrays claim that the Pioneers grow faster and get larger.  Maybe next time well grow the Pioneers and Rangers side-by-side and see what happens).  But for the Cornish Cross, apparently you have to butcher them before 11 weeks or they start to gobble.

From the graph above, its clear the growth curves were pretty linear for both breeds, meaning that they would have probably gotten a little bigger if we waited even longer.  But its also interesting to compare these two breeds to the Eggers, just for fun.  The Eggers grew, on average, 17 grams per day. That number is skewed a little by one of the Easter Eggers, which hung tough with the Pioneers, the hefty girl.  Even now, shes the only one who cant fully fly up to the roost!  The Pioneers were almost twice that growth rate, at 33 grams per day, on average.  And the Roasters were nearly twice that again!  Holy smokes!

One other thing we wanted to mention was the health of the Roasters.  They are like the standard Cornish Cross in that they are thoroughly disgusting birds, apparently living solely to eat and poop.  Theyre dirty and poopy, but they grow fast.  So fast, in fact, that the high growth rate can cause problems if they get too old, or at high elevations (we live at about 5,600 feet, which counts as "high").  We took a chance on the fact that McMurray recommends against the standard Cornish Cross at elevations about 5,000 feet, but had no such warning for the slightly slower-growing Cornish Cross Roasters.  We had multiple days over 90 °F toward the later weeks, and lost nary a bird.  Keeping them outside nearly the whole time certainly helped, but were happy to report that our batch did fine up to 10.5 weeks in high elevations and high temperatures.

So, there you have it! A breakdown of our spring 2014 chicken experience.  How do our chickens compare to yours?  Any questions you have that we didnt address in the post?  Let us know in the comments section below!

Chickens Final Stats

On Sunday, we put our fall batch of chickens in the freezer, and now that weve had a chance to crunch the numbers and see how we came out in terms of yields and costs, we wanted to get the data out there for peer review.  First, a few general comments.  It was definitely worth it, for the meat, the experience, and the fertilizer that will go on the garden next year.  We raised almost 90 lbs of chicken in ten weeks, 60 of which went in the chicken tote Sunday morning.  That means Katie is even stronger than we thought!  The red ranger broilers had a 100% survival rate (at our elevation of 5600 feet), other than an incident with the new neighbor dog last Tuesday.*  We might try a batch of Cornish crosses in the spring, side by side with the red rangers for a direct comparison.  Wood chips worked well as a bedding, which, considering we can get them for free, and shavings are $6.99/bag, is good to know.  The chips are dustier, dont look quite as clean as the shavings, and wont break down in the compost as fast, but in our opinion, still come out ahead (chickens are inherently dusty anyway).  We just have to watch out for chips that might have cedar in them, since cedar can cause respiratory problems for the chickens.  Katie says she doesnt like that theyre also harder to spread than the shavings.

We had the eight-week weigh in a couple weeks back, which was a good comparison for how we were doing at the ten-week mark.  Next time, well track their weights through the whole cycle.

Comparison of each chickens weight at eight weeks, ten weeks, and dressed.

The graph shows a lot of interesting (to us, at least) info.  The first is that the chickens gained 15-20% of their final weight in the last two weeks.  The gimpy one, at the far left, gained almost 30%.  That is to say, it did much better once we were able to put it back with the rest of the flock.  If we could have let them go another week or maybe two weeks, they might have done even better.  For meat breeds other than Cornish crosses, a ten week butcher is pretty early.  Still, a number of the roosters were over the 6-lb mark, and the dressed weight came out to 66% of the final live weight, which is a pretty good yield ratio.  All of the birds made it into the traditional chicken weight classes, with the gray one and the gimpy one in the squab broiler class, the rest of the hens as fryers, and the roosters as roasters.  And, we can say from our initial impressions of the roasted meat and rendered stock, the flavor is awesome.

We had about a quarter bag left of our seventh 40-lb bag of feed, which means these 17 chickens consumed about 270 lbs of feed in total.  That works out to a feed conversion ratio of 3.09 for feed-to-final-live-weight and 4.67 for feed-to-dressed-weight.  Not Cornish cross-type numbers, but decent. 

The price per pound worked out to $7.05. (!!)  Kind of spendy compared to commercial-scale organic whole chickens, but again, these arent Cornish crosses.  Plus, we get complimentary garden fertilizer in the deal.  The pie chart below shows that by far the biggest expense is the (organic) feed, which at $34 per 40 lb bag adds up quickly.  Heck, thats almost as expensive as the organic oats we eat for breakfast, and thats people food!  Next round well experiment with buying feed in bulk or mixing, maybe even growing, our own grains.  In any case, if you want to know why organic meat is so expensive, there you have it!

Expenses associated with raising our fall chickens.  Electricity is from the heat lamp we ran while the chicks were very young and on cold nights.

Fresh in the cooler!

Ooh, that looks good.   Katie says, "No drooling on the camera!"

*We discovered the hard way that the fence around our yard was not completely dog-proof, and lost six chickens in the melee, including the little gray one.  Since the chickens were so close to butcher, we decided to see how badly damaged the meat was, and we were pleased to see that it was no more mangled than the meat we bring home on hunting trips.  So, we decided to put the birds in the freezer.  The warnings against eating the dog-killed meat are generally that 1. The dogs mouth might have bacteria or dirt or something that would contaminate the meat and 2. The chickens werent properly killed and bled out, so the meat wont be as high-quality as it would have been.  However, our take is that well be cleaning the carcass well and cooking it to well-done anyway, so bacteria and dirt dont worry us too much.  Also, to return to the hunting analogy, game animals are rarely killed in the way that chickens are butchered (but rather much more like the dog-killed chickens, with puncture wounds and laying in the dirt), and we consider game meat to be of sufficiently high quality to earn freezer space.  Plus, we met the dog and it seems healthy, other than an obsession with killing feathered things.  So, were comfortable putting those birds in the freezer and not wasting 35% of our chickens.  If we were selling them, it would be a different story.


Have you raised red rangers before?  How did your numbers compare to ours?  How did you cut down on feed costs?  Let us know in the comments section below!

Aquaponic System Final Design

So, here’s the floor plan. As you can see, it is 22.4m long and 6.55m wide. Some system details are as follows:

Aquaponics, ækw??p?n?ks, pisciponics

• Rearing Tank — The rearing tank will hold roughly 9.5m3 of water. I rounded the ends so the stupid fish don’t get bloody noses all the time. The tank will be stocked every 4 weeks with 120 fish. There will be 6 cohorts of fish aged 4 weeks apart at all times. I will separate the cohorts with suitably sized netting. The position of these divisions will be adjustable in accordance with the growth rate of any given cohort. Harvesting will be done weekly, 30 fish at a time. The outside of the tank facing south will be painted black and exposed to the sun.
• Hydroponic Tanks — There will be 4 hydroponic tanks. Each will be 12m long and 1.2 meters wide. At a water depth of 30cm, each tank will hold roughly 4.32m3. Plants will be put in net pots which are inserted into holes in Styrofoam boards (1.2m x 0.6m) and dangle their roots happily in the nutrient rich water.
• Clarifier/Filter/Degassing Units — Each hydroponic tank will get its own set of these highly important if simply designed contraptions. A clarifier, otherwise known as a swirl filter and other such names, removes the lumpier pieces of fish waste. I intend to use 200l plastic barrels. The filter is just another smaller barrel that’s got an armload of orchard netting in it to which the finer solids will be instructed to attach themselves in an orderly fashion.  The degassing tank is another small barrel with a few air stones in it to help remove carbon dioxide, methane, and such.
• Pump — I’ve purchased a Reef Octopus recirculation pump which will push 7,000l per hour while consuming a frugal 88W. This is roughly 1/4 of the flow rate that the UVI system uses.
• Air Pumps — I’ve purchased 5 Hailea air pumps. Each would push 60l of air if only I were at sea level instead of 1,200m. They are also frugal, using 55W each. Each hydroponic tank will have its own air pump. Ten of the 12 diffusion nozzles fitted to an air pump will go to air stones spaced equally along the bottom of the respective hydroponic tank. The other two will be fed to the degassing tank. The 5th air pump will be devoted to keeping the fish bubbly and happy.
• Sump — The sump is just a 1.2m round concrete ring set in the ground at a lower height than the rest of the system. The pump will reside here and replace the water that has flowed by gravity from the rearing tanks through the other system components.  There will be certain losses due to evaporation, plant uptake, leaks, etc. Depending on the water temperature, this loss will be replaced by either hot water produced in a solar water heater (a nice name for a couple of 200l barrels painted black, facing the sun, and enclosed/insulated) or ambient temperature water from a rain barrel. This is also the place where additives such as hydrated lime are gradually added if necessary to raise the PH.
• Total Water Volume — About 30m3
• Total Growing Area — 55 to 57.6m2
• Greenhouse Footprint — 147m2