Crocuses, the first flower of spring.
The spring crops are planted. The compost pile in the middle of the garden is for summer crops.The broiler chicks are here!
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Rites of Spring
Several events signal Spring is here. Crocuses, the first flower of Spring dot our landscape. Our Spring crops are planted. Our broilers have arrived. Each year we grow 40-50 broilers for our Sunday dinners. We roast them or rotisserie them, but first we have to raise them. It is exciting to get the call from the Extension office to come and pick them up. We raise them as a 4-H project for our children. We brood them in a box with wood shavings for bedding. We then move them into the chicken coop for a couple of weeks and then out to the pasture pens. We feed them out to heavy weights; 7-10 pound carcass weight. We have a big family to feed. We hope that 45 survive. Broilers are not very hardy. I don’t suggest broilers for small back yard farms. They are not worth the effort to grow just a few. Stick with layers which are easier to keep and a lot more economical. (See my other articles on chickens.)
Crocuses, the first flower of spring.
The spring crops are planted. The compost pile in the middle of the garden is for summer crops.
The broiler chicks are here!
Crocuses, the first flower of spring.The spring crops are planted. The compost pile in the middle of the garden is for summer crops.The broiler chicks are here!
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5 comments:
Well I can't eat my chicken tacos now. Thanks a lot !
I love it! I sure miss my hens but hopefully this summer we'll be in our home and will be able to get some more. I have a question though - we were hoping to get 15 roasters for our backyard - is that not a good idea? At what point do you think they are economical?
I may never get over how cute they are and how short their lives are. That is probably going to be the tipping point for me. I'll be getting layers, but whether or not I can eat them after they stopped laying..well, won't that be the test? Garden looks fantastic!
awesome!!
Megan,
They become economical when you grow 30,000 broilers 6 times a year. I am not being funny. In one of my other articles on this blog I do the economics and it costs us $1.15/pound to grow them. And that doesn't count all of our labor feeding and watering them every day. The commercial broilers houses can do it very cheap. But we do grow them simply because we want to grow our own meat. The biggest problem is getting them dressed out. We have always paid someone to do it for us. I may try it this year. If you really want to grow broilers, then go ahead. I do enjoy my layers alot more.
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