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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Broilers at 4 Weeks

This past week I was reminded why I advise urban or suburban farmers against broilers – chicken s#@&! Lots of chicken s#@&! The feed conversion ratio is about 3-4 pounds of feed to one pound of meat. Where does the rest of that feed go? They metabolize a little feed in the Krebs cycle but they are very lethargic so most of the feed just ends up as s#@&! By the time I get my broilers out on pasture I have a lot of chicken s#@&! to shovel out of my chicken coop. It is wet and it stinks! Layers lay eggs and are very active so they metabolize much more efficiently producing less s#@&!


A couple of layers escaped our chicken run and have been roaming the yard for a few days. I discovered their cache when I climbed on the hay stack to get a bale of hay for the horses.

4 comments:

ChristyACB said...

Now that is something to think about!

And those eggs, having been out a few days, are they still good?

Dale Johnson said...

We will not sell these eggs but we will eat them, as long as they are cooked all the way through.

Sarah said...

You should have seen the coolest portable chicken coops I saw this weekend. You would have loved them. They were painted like a cute red and white barn, but they had handles like a wheelbarrow. So you can "fertilize" different parts of your yard w/out having to clean out the %$#@. :)

Dale Johnson said...

Sarah,

Can you get me a picture of the coop?

Dale