WooHoo

Now that you have yard birds, you're not going to piss, bitch, and moan about the way I do it are you? Most everybody around here that gets a new chicken start telling me how wrong I am for growing commercial and how it's cruel.

Gotta have at least one stewed dinner.

It depends on who you talk to. If it's there farm kids that grew up on or around the farms they don't complain. The yuppies that want to live in the country but don't want the country there, they don't like it. Yeah we have a bunch of farms here. Broiler chickens is Georgia's biggest cash crop by far. We're the broiler capitol of the world was the last I heard.

Most of the people that complain here (and probably there to) have never stepped foot on a farm but they can tell you everything you're doing wrong because they watched some documentary on YouTube showing the "atrocities" that the "monsters" cause those chickens to put up with. I think it's absolutely one of the best jobs to have. You're a livestock farmer on a contract basis so you're getting paid as long as you do what you're supposed to. I grew up on a pullet farm and I saw and learned things that most people will never know anything about and my girls are doing the same thing. It's where I learned how to work and they'll learn the same way.

If they grow a 4 to 5 lbs bird and I had a chance I'd jump with both feet. That's what I'm doing here. Building 6 50x600 ft houses for Pilgrim. If they're bigger than that I might think a little more but a 4 to 5 lb bird can be grown in around 35 to 42 days.

Edited by thendrix - 03 Oct 2018 at 7:46pm

Yup all wood up to 66 ft wide here. I've heard of some 80 ft wide in Alabama that is steel girders but I've never seen them. Kinda strange they're just 300 ft long. They haven't built any 300 ft houses here since the early to mid 80's. Might be breeder houses though. They're usually smaller than broiler houses

Edited by thendrix - 04 Oct 2018 at 5:27am

Somewhat along the same line, a company from Minnesota has come in hear Benton Township, Eaton County, and wants to cover 700 acer with solar panels on good farm land.

Those chickies are the BEST eatin,,,,,,,when they get to run around on the ground and feast on bugs of every color.  They get all that yellow/orange fat in em,,,,,,OH SO GOOD eatin!!
With all them dogs you got Shameless, how come you don't have you a good coon dog??  Let him/her loose around the farm and they'll take care of them coons!!
Yeah, all them dooo-gooders want stuff, but no where near them!!

Them solar panels work better in the cooler areas

We gots Rose Acre Farms here. Last I heard they was the largest egg producer in the USA. 1 son worked for them 25 years.   Gots farms all over the states. I hot some chicken poo put on some dormet Alalafa one year. It had been a marginal stand. Next 2 years it the best hay I ever raized.

yep...Joe...we've had them before, they are really fun to watch, and they mess with the dogs too! one day they was sitting on the fence by the highway, you'd a thoughts they was watching a tennis match watching the cars go by! only thing I hated about them, they'd rat me out coming home late! lol

TMiller/NC wrote: Thendrix, I have a friend that raises chickens for Tyson, he says the odor from the houses smells like money!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He's exactly right! Smells like $.056 per lb. on the foot and $10 a yard when it's headed to a hay field!

I don't know about there but here I've heard Tyson can be hard to deal with.

We also have 4 as of right now. 2 are 40x300 and 2 are 40x400. We grow 72,000 at a time. Soon we'll have 6 50x600 houses and we'll grow 232,000 per flock.

how you gonna catch all them, to puts into the crates?

Th company sends a crew with a Moffet lift, 4 tractor trailers with cages, and 7 or 8 people to catch. They drive all the birds to one side then turn the lights down. When it's dark the birds sit down because they can't see where to go and the catchers walk through and pick them up. Takes them 6 to 7 hours to catch 70,000 this way

&$@*^$(%@^%7 COONS! they got my new bird last night! guess i'm gonna hafta live trap them again and maybe take them over to the new chicky barns!