Feeding meat hybrids: update

Well, the tractor was getting a little crowded, and I wanted to begin watching the female birds' diet a bit more closely, so I've removed 10 pullets into a large pen and kept mainly cockerels in the tractor.

All are doing very well on about 80% home mix, 10% commercial grower and 10% scraps/mince/kefir/rolled oats or whatever else looks good. It's a bit ad hoc but growth is pretty even and more to the point the birds all look well.

To keep the pullets from developing leg problems, I've given them a shed with no roosts. However so they're not sitting on the litter I've added some log offcuts and a spare tyre. They can perch on these easily without being so high that getting up and down is difficult.

Eventually — here's hoping — they'll reach point of lay and deposit the odd egg in the middle of the spare tyre. I've kept 10 pullets but expect only half that number to reach laying age. If they all survive into lay (which would be great) I'll obviously need to add another couple of nests.

This pen abuts the one currently holding anconas and leghorn x chicks. As it happens they're the same age as the hybrids, but you wouldn't know it to look at them. When the hybrids reach sexual maturity I should be able to let an ancona rooster visit them through a little hatchway during the day. At night (due to noise/neighbours/cranky husband) I'll have to put the rooster back in the night-shed. But that won't be difficult.

It's the generation after that which I'll be most interested in. If I breed the hybrids to an ancona, I should get some black-speckled birds (not that I know or care about colour genetics) that lay reasonably well but more to the point aren't overweight at a young age. Perhaps rather than using the anconas I'll put a leghorn x cockerel over them instead. That would mean slightly better laying, as the leghorn x come from utility strains and are very productive. The males from that mating I would want to put with the ISA browns — that will keep egg laying utility high, but would add some colour so the birds are slightly less visible to goshawks. (That's another reason to use the anconas instead.)

All of this crossbreeding may end up in the wastebasket, or may end up producing long lived but productive dual purpose birds. If it ends up in the wastebasket I suspect it will be for reasons of ill health — meat hybrids are notoriously susceptible to Marek's. (Despite being vaccinated, one already had signs of some type of tumour disease — see one of my earlier posts.) But if I can maintain a balance between moderate weight gain (as I said earlier I just want a slightly weightier carcass at 16 weeks), good (not extreme) laying ability and hardiness, I'll be very happy indeed.

If not, of course it will be back to the drawing board, and I may go back to the malay-ISA or malay-leghorn. They were very nice birds and the malay-ISA I used as a broody has just gone back into lay despite it being mid winter. She's only been off the chicks for a couple of weeks, so that's pretty productive... If I could just have gotten those cockerels 400g heavier they would have been the perfect dual purpose bird!

Changing feed

It can be very hard to get commercial-raised adult birds to switch to a new diet. Just recently I bought a handful of layers at point of lay from a hatchery, and found that they wouldn't attempt to eat any of the home mix. Over a few days they gradually took a little of it, but I would say they were eating about half a normal amount of feed for the first two weeks, and as a result laying was greatly delayed.

The prevailing advice is to do a half-half mix for a week to gradually change birds over to a new feed. However I didn't want to buy a bag of layer pellets just to do a one-week withdrawal to a new feed. Besides, my other birds do well on varying feed.

Accepting variety is a vital part of keeping birds healthy on a home mix. There are times when an important ingredient becomes unavailable (recently I couldn't buy yeast) and so other ingredients need to be added to make up for whatever vitamins are going to be missing. There may also be times when an available feed is of poor quality. And of course price sometimes dictates a change. As a result the home feed isn't a fixed diet but a constantly shifting, constantly changing thing.

The key to being able to vary the feed in this way is to get the chicks used to variety very early on. They have to get used to not only each individual ingredient, but also the fact that the mix itself changes over time. Happily this seems to work.

The only shortcoming is that chicks whose feed includes whole grains etc may be more vulnerable to coccidiosis when the owner is relying on medicated feed (not management) to keep parasite numbers low. If you add non medicated ingredients to a chick's diet, you reduce the amount of coccidiostat each bird eats. Not everyone may be interested in reducing reliance on medications. In that case I would suggest only adding a very small amount of extra feeds, e.g. by way of an afternoon 'treat'.

In the meantime rest assured, when birds are weaned off medications they can still be introduced to a varying natural diet, though the process takes time. My new layers are now eating the mix quite happily, and three out of four are laying (the other is taking a break until the day length increases).

We're not meat, we're chickens! (Unless we're being nasty...)

I often feel the term 'meat hybrid' is slightly cruel. It isn't of course, but I can see why mass scale farmers might be tempted to view them as meat even while they're alive. They do some silly things sometimes (like nearly flattening one another in their race for food).
 But I still think they're sentient in some way. They have personalities, even if they don't carry those differences to an extreme (in a prey animal that flocks together, individuality is a curse). And who's to say this fellow isn't thinking?

Stepping into the tractor is always an adventure. Firstly they crowd at the front so much it's hard to find a clear spot to tread — I have to carefully nudge them away with my feet. Secondly they like to try to eat anything that presents itself — fingers, bucket, toes — and if it's not edible, some of them will square up to the stray object (such as the feed scoop) and try to start a boxing match. Yet they're quite nice creatures, and I haven't seen any of them squaring up to one another.

The layers are a slightly different story when it comes to both temperament and making pets. Since these are to be breeders I've had to be a bit firmer when it comes to aggression between the birds (they're not aggressive at all toward me). One of the leghorn x (the white birds) was really making life hell for the others, so I've removed him. It doesn't make sense to raise cockerels to adulthood before dispatching if they're going to harm each other. Fortunately now that he's gone the remaining cockerels are getting along quite well.

The removed bird was processed into healthy dinner for my beloved flock protector. Although only 7 weeks old and a layer, he still provided my dog with her complete daily meal, and nothing was wasted (except the feathers, head, feet and intestines). I feel it was a fairly good result from a non-ideal situation.

So that's today's round-up, with ups and downs (and probably some contradictions)...

layers doing well, time for mealworms?

The layer chicks are the same age as the meaties, i.e. 7 weeks. It's so lovely to pick them up and find that, despite a diet of only 50% commercial feed, they have as much feather and bodyweight as any layer could. I'm also happy with their behaviour and feel their nutrition has been close to just right.

If I could add something to their diet, it would be more fresh meat. However that's not going to happen with mince at $7 or $8 a kilo and pet mince fiddly to feed (because of the need to rinse/heat to remove preservatives). Never mind. As they go on, I'll find ways to keep up the amino acid supplement while they get a basic protein percentage from the mixed legumes and grains.

Meanwhile I've invested in a $10 container of mealworms. I've never kept mealworms before, but I'd bought a bag of bran from the feed store as a chick diet ingredient, and figured 'why not?' Vegetable peelings, old flour, skim milk and bran seem to be all the mealworms want in life... Hopefully I can let their numbers build up to a level where they're able to be fed to the chickens daily.

Worth a shot, anyhow... I'll keep you posted. Hopefully they won't do a 'worm farm' and vanish on me...

Tractor life

The tractor seems to be working perfectly now. I shift it every two days: by then the meat hybrids have thoroughly soiled the ground. They seem to be enjoying the sun and the grass — it's such a lovely sight when they take a break from eating to sunbathe.

They're now 7 weeks old (plus a day or two) and while there's a fair bit of variation in size, none is looking seedy. I did roll the tractor edge over a cockerel accidentally this morning — I couldn't see past the tarp as I was very slowly dragging — but he doesn't appear to have been harmed. Thank heavens! This didn't start with a desire to save money but to raise healthy chickens as humanely as possible.

Their feed is still 50% commercial grower and 50% home mix (sprouted wheat, corn and peas; cracked sweet lupins; sunflower and lucerne with molasses water, seaweed meal and the one I always forget to mention, salt). On top of that I add an afternoon treat which is high in methionine — 50% soured or skim milk with rolled oats to soak the moisture up, and 50% pet mince which has been rinsed thoroughly in hot water to remove sulphur dioxide preservative. They wolf it down, but then they wolf everything down. :)

You can see what the daily feed looks like behind the dozing birds in the photo below:

They really eat a lot, and drink a lot:

Their growth rate is just about what I want. By that I mean, they aren't gaining weight so fast that they won't be able to walk in another week or two. A couple are quite big but the majority are nicely balanced and even hop up into the upright feeder sometimes. I like to see birds that can perch if they want to (even if for safety's sake there's no perch there).

The photo below shows one of the heaviest cockerels... I think 10 weeks might just about be a maximum he'll get to before leg issues occur. But I'll be happy if all the cockerels make 12 weeks and in a few cases 14. As for the pullets, as soon as I've made the meat selections, I'll start increasing the time between morning and afternoon feeds so they do a bit more foraging. At the moment feed is available all day, and I'm relying on its higher fibre content (compared to fully commercial feed), slower progress through the digestive system, and more 'satisfying' nature to keep the birds' weight from skyrocketing.

They're sleeping on the ground under the tarp, as the cold brooder was taken out some time ago. No more mats, either — they don't need them unless it's raining so heavily that water is trickling underneath the tarp. Temperatures at night are getting down around 5C, with a frost about 3 days ago (so it must have been near zero celcius). I'm happy with how they look, and in fact when I went out to check on them on the coldest night the area under the tarp was surprisingly warm. They have such high metabolisms they really crank out the heat.

But just on the subject of looks, as you can see, the feathering is still patchy on some. Here's the worst one:

It looks bizarre and the fact that I had a similar issue with the sussex was what made me review the diet for methionine. Having said that, the layer chicks raised partly with the meat birds above feathered properly.

Still, as things go I'm quite happy with the balance between growth and chicken health. In future I'll only brood 15 (not 30) to reduce coccidiosis issues, and I'll pay more attention to weather reports as well as seeding the brooder gradually with adult droppings. The fact that these birds had to be shifted to new brooders three times (because they outgrew each one) meant that each new brooder run was also probably devoid of coccidia to start with. Thus when they hit the ground under the tractor they were hit with a massive increase in oocysts (especially when it rained). Well, that's my thinking, faulty as it may prove to be...

Then again, if I get breeders from this batch and manage to hatch offspring that are a little lighter and healthier, then I probably won't get meat hybrids again. That's the plan! :)

cocci update

I seem to have gotten the meat hybrids through the cocci bout. All but one are still going well and appearing completely healthy.

The one I lost was obviously very sick and unable to stand or walk. He was culled and given an amateur post mortem. The ceca (two long 'horns' coming off the main gut) were both full of dark blood. Clearly he had severe cecal coccidiosis. However there was an unexpected post mortem finding, and that was a large grey tumour or growth under his breast. It was the size of a broad bean, which is large for a chick not quite 5 weeks old, and quite hard, with a covering of many blood vessels. I don't know what to make of it beyond presuming it was a type of cancer, but hopefully there won't be sequels.

For the other birds, treatment was mainly a coccidiocide (sulphaquin — which is no longer able to be purchased) but I also moved the pen every 24 hours to new ground, and gave them all 2 days on pure chick starter (medicated), then slowly changed the diet back to 50/50 commercial/home mix. Now I'm moving the tractor every 2 days. I'll gradually extend the length of time between moves.

I've also taken the layer type chicks out of that pen and put them with the ancona chicks, while taking the malay x 'mother' back into the layer flock. The mother had to go back to the flock because she would have killed the layer type chicks that had been raised among the meat hybrids (remember she rejected them earlier). However 5 week old chicks are quite good at accepting others of their own age and size. Meanwhile raising all the baby layers together is better in terms of keeping an eye on their diet and health. If I'd left them with the meat hybrids they would probably have been starved out as the meat birds grew (and layers at 5 weeks on do like to roost, whereas the meat birds shouldn't).

All the chicks are on 50% commercial (medicated) chick grower and 50% home mix. The medicated grower component will be reduced in the next 2 weeks. By week 10 I mean to have them on an entirely natural diet (though not organic due to price and sourcing issues). By 'natural' I mean fresh natural greens, occasional bugs, grains and legumes, oilseeds, probiotic soured milk, fresh or mealed meat, yeast and shell grit. This contrasts to commercial feeds which have petrochemical-derived methionine to make up for the amino acid shortage in the wheat-soy base.

I've become aware that I may not have enough methionine in their diet, so I've started to increase soured milk. Signs of lack of methionine were that the meat hybrids (just like the sussex) have been feathering a little more slowly than I expected, especially around the rear end. The sussex did feather up eventually, but I do feel a bird should be fully feathered at 6 weeks.

I'm also trying fresh pet mince, but this time I'm soaking/cooking it first, to extract some of the preservatives that destroy thiamine. Ironically cooking also destroys thiamine, but this only affects the meat. I take it that if you feed sulphur dioxide laced meat it also destroys thiamine in the other feeds given at the same time.

By week 12 I'll roughly sort the keepers from the freezers. Keepers will be well grown but active. If all the birds still appear happy then I won't process any. Why hurry? If they're doing well, haven't overgrown their legs and basically seem to be enjoying life, then I'll be happy too. If they look happy but a bit crowded, I'll move some to another pen. No drama. By the time they start to crow, however, I won't have much choice — I have neighbours to think about, and only one sound-deadening rooster shed (which I've divided in half down the middle so I can keep a mature rooster with hens on one side, and young growing cockerels together in the other — each shed side has an exit to its own pen).

Eventually with the meat birds I plan to get down to a manageable bunch of healthy-as-possible girls, which will stay in the tractor. When they begin to lay, I'll start putting a rooster in with them during the day, and collecting and setting eggs. A majority of the offspring should be a lot longer lived and healthier than the meat parents, and should be genuinely good dual purpose birds.

After I get to the stage of having healthy heavyweight dual purpose birds that don't go broody too often, and also lay quite well without reproductive problems, I'll look at crossing them to some of the purebred utility dual purpose breeds. I should be able to introduce some fancy colours and other traits (for instance cochin or brahma would help with temperament). But that's for the future, if I make it that far.

This is all trial and error — as you can see, I've made errors in the past (e.g. cocci). The methionine question is still up for grabs. But so far I don't think any major damage was done. Even if my birds stay slightly slower to feather than normal, as long as they're growing well methionine may not be a dramatic issue. In any case I don't want birds that put on meat as fast as the hybrids — such fast growth is a product of industrial farming, and can't really be sustained without it.

Happy anconas, happy malay x ISA brown mum!

Time for something a bit more up beat... Just thought I'd include a few shots of the malay x ISA brown mother and 'her' brood, all coming along nicely.

Below is a good comparison shot of male and female anconas. (Note: they're not 100% purebred.) However you can see the gender differences fairly clearly: the pullet (left) has a much lower stance, smaller legs, and a smaller, narrower, duller comb. There's room for error on all these observations but at this age it's a fairly reliable guess.

And a quick note regarding coccidiosis: these birds were in a small, very wet pen during the rainy spell. The above pen is much drier. I moved them after the meat birds started to show symptoms because I worried these guys would too... But they haven't needed medications and are still going well on a 50/50 diet.

Today I saw the malay x mother encourage one of them to eat a whole sunflower seed (which it did). If the chicks are trying larger whole grains then in theory they'll develop stronger gizzard muscles. Having processed quite a few birds, I feel this is true.

Cocci seems to be under control, birds back to normal...

The two days on sulphaquin seem to have been enough to eliminate cocci symptoms in those birds that were starting to droop. All are active and eating well again.

I wouldn't say they're 100% healthy, but healing takes time. The two birds to the right of this photo were the worst affected, and will take longest to get well. However they were eating happily this morning, and perhaps look a little further under par due to the cold (it's quite chilly and breezy where the tractor is at the moment). Still, I'm happy enough with their progress. Coccidiosis can be very fast to take down birds and the two pullets to the right probably suffered the most.

At the moment I've got them on a 90% commercial starter diet — this contains a coccidiostat to keep the parasites from getting out of control. I'm just going to do this for a couple more days and then start to reduce the medicated feed again, in preference for a more natural diet. This weaning will take place fully over the next one to two weeks. Hopefully my mistake with moving the pen infrequently (plus heavy rain) was the only real trigger for their illness, and I won't be risking their health by continuing with the dietary change.

So here's the plan in detail. Watching closely for coccidiosis, I'll start withdrawing the medicated feed once more, and slowly reintroduce cracked corn, millet, protein meals, lupins, lucerne (alfalfa), sunflower seeds, sprouted grains, kefir, oats and meat (bandsaw dust from the butcher, or common mince). I'll also be adding very small amounts of seaweed meal for minerals (seaweed meal is too high in iodine to be fed in large amounts), and a pinch of salt (birds do need some salt, though I always forget to mention it).

The aim is to have 6 week old birds on a fully natural diet (that is, natural but not stringently organic), with processing time set for around the 10-12 week mark instead of around 7 weeks as with commercially reared birds. The point of that is to enhance flavour, protein complexity and therefore nutritional status of the meat, while letting the birds enjoy a tiny bit more life... Meanwhile I aim to keep 3 or 4 of the best pullets to attempt breeding from later on. 

Worth a shot? We'll all have to wait to find out...

Meanwhile he's a comparison shot of the layer chick (front) with one of the meat birds. As you can see, the meat cockerel has that slightly more 'tucked' look while the layer didn't seem to suffer coccidiosis at all.

Details of most recent cold brooder...

This post is just to show some details of the latest brooder version, which I'm using in a tractor. However I need to add a very strong caution about following my lead: be sure that no rain can seep underneath the nest area (a tray full of litter for the birds to sleep on may help), no draughts can blow through from any direction, and the ambient temperatures are not going to be even a little bit Siberian (though of course this depends on the age of the birds). In fact the best place to use a cold brooder like this one would be in a cosily sealed shed, with clean dry litter all over the floor.

As with all cold brooding remember too that the trick is to balance insulation and warmth against ventilation (alongside the ability to expand the brooding area as chicks grow). It's not rocket science but neither is it a total cinch get right first time. The safe thing is to remain vigilant until you know what you're doing. And also as with all cold brooding, chicks have to be taught to use it.

Here are some details of the unit. It was incredibly easy to make, and took my birds from the day they turned 3 weeks of age (when they outgrew their former brooder and run). I feel this is the right age to try using a brooder like this one, because the birds have some feathers and are that bit more hardy, and this brooder is really quite airy. Furthermore the metal legs can tend to dissipate heat away from the unit, whereas a wooden-legged brooder might not... (To stop that I've got the curtain running around on the inside of all metal parts.)

Anyhow, here is the basic skeleton (as a sketch):

It's basically a rectangular mesh box. Two of the extended sides form supports for an open area underneath. However these mesh sides aren't quite strong enough in themselves to keep the unit from flexing, so I've added 4 makeshift 'legs' made of cheap brackets wired to the box base. You can see how they sit below:

The height of these legs and hence the height the box of hay sits above the ground is dependent on the height of the chicks. For very young birds all cold brooders need to have their insulation (or ceiling) as close as possible to the chicks. My birds, being older, could cope with a space under the box being about head height while standing normally (younger birds would need a slightly lower ceiling, so they have to duck when entering). Naturally the area enclosed by the fringed curtain (or the perimeter of the legged box) also reflects the grouped size of that particular number of birds. There can obviously be some leeway with this; you don't want chicks to be packed like sardines so that some spill out through the curtain and others can't breathe.

I've put some fairly thick material as a curtain all the way around this brooder (attached by c clips to the base of the box), and along the front where chicks come and go I've cut the fabric into strips to make a fringe:

When first starting out with this kind of cold brooder it's vital to make sure that chicks can go nowhere else except into the nestbox — that is, they can't pace up and down the sides looking for a way in and eventually chilling. If the run is the same width as the nest area the birds will happily learn to go through the curtain into the warmer area under the hay.

The hay in the box on top isn't packed firmly, and is about 10cm deep:

As you can see from the above photo I've got the hay sitting on a layer of shadecloth so it doesn't all fall through the rather wide mesh.

The tarp on top of the unit wouldn't be necessary in a cosy shed, and in fact is a bit of a drawback. That is, as the chicks breathe the hay is meant to breathe too, allowing water vapour from their exhalations to rise up and dissipate without wetting the hay. However with a tarp on top the hay can get damp quite quickly. For this reason I've got the sides of the box above the layer of hay quite open, with the tarp pinned so that it really only covers the top, not any of the sides. The tarp is partly there to stop any moisture falling into the hay from above (my tractor isn't 100% waterproof on top) and partly to stop chicks scratching all their insulation hay out during the day (which they would otherwise love to do). However in a dry shed you could just lay a sheet of mesh on top to discourage scratching.

Remember this cold brooder is being used for birds around 3 weeks of age... However it's getting down to about 5C (last night was even colder) so I'm pleased to say it's working well for birds at that age.

Just one more thing: I've seen similar brooders to this one being recommended for younger chicks. In particular I remember one made of timber, with wing-nuts that allowed the 4 legs to be lengthened or shortened depending on the age of the chicks. I'd be a little careful using this kind of brooder in really low temperatures — I feel they can be a little too airy for really young chicks. But on the other hand chicks do need ventilation, and it's very easy for my other cold brooder (the square timber box version) to become filled with dampness and ammonia from a couple of nights' brooding.

Ultimately this is an art for people with a bit of free time and a great willingness to fiddle and fidget... But I must say, when the chicks emerge at a happy run exactly as they do from under a hen, it can be a very rewarding way to brood. :-)

Down to one light sussex... Misadventure!

Never count your chickens... Not even after they've hatched.

Just on sunset, I lost a light sussex in the weirdest way. I took them all a snack but daylight had faded early, and both the light sussex had already gone to roost.

Thinking there was still enough light, I called them out and put a little bit of food on the ledge just below their hatchway. It turns out this was a deadly thing to do!

Trying to get to it first, the two birds went for the hatchway at the same time. The little bloke fell backwards into the shed while the larger one came outside. I wasn't too worried as the hatchway itself is only about 40cm above the floor — it's not a long way to fall, and I seem to remember that chickens have wings.

About minute later he still hadn't emerged, so I went in and had a look — he was up on the roost heading for the hatchway, and seemed fine. Then he came outside, climbed down the ramp into the pen and went over to the feeder to get his share. A few seconds later he stepped back from the feeder and fell over, spasmed a few times, went very pale and died.

Just like that — gone. I don't even know what to make of it! I've had several breeds including heavy ones, but have never lost a bird to a minor fall. But somehow the jolt must have ruptured something, perhaps his heart or liver. I won't know because it was too dark to do a post mortem, and frankly the last thing I wanted to do was cut the poor fellow open.

So there we have it — sudden sussex death syndrome. His brother will be a bit lonely now — and he's the one with odd wingtips, so not a great breeding prospect.

Quite an odd and unsettling day!