This time I decided to go with a slightly different breed of broiler instead of the classic Cornish Cross. The Cornish Cross breed is the standard chicken house breed that most fecal contamination confinement house operations use to produce their antibiotic-ed , arsenic-ed, steroid-ed, hemorrhoid-ed (just though that one in to see if you were paying attention) factory, assembly line chicken product. Fortunately if you get rid of the confinement model this breed does pretty well on a movable pen pastured model with a daily move or with a free range model. But you still have problems with them every now and them since they were bred specifically for the chicken house model. They were developed to be lethargic, fast growing, birds that eat a lot of feed. The problem with this in the chicken house model, in which they are denied any exercise, is that if you let them grow to be two old, with the ration that they receive that has steroids and the like in it, they will not be able to walk because their body weight gain in meet will be so prolific that their bone structure can't keep up with it and they will either develop severe leg problems or die of a heart attack.
The way we combat this problem in the pastured poultry world is, first of all, to not feed the birds hunger inducing poisons such as arsenic; obviously. We give them plenty of room to exercise so they aren't just being fast growing couch potatoes that can't move around but we also have to limit their feed intake towards the end of their lives when they are gaining a lot of weight. The chickens do much, much better on the pastured model and have great lives but they are still not really developed to be foraging chickens; which is what historically normal chickens have been.
The reason that we still raise this breed of chickens is because they give the large double breast that everyone is used to seeing. The more normal chickens have much smaller more narrow breasts. As Joel Salatin says, in our day and age, people are used to seeing big chickens and they are automatically turned off by a narrow breasted bird. I mean, I myself like that big breast on a chicken because that's my favorite part to eat. So trying to sell weird looking chickens on top of already being classified as a "weird" farmer is just a little too much. Joel Salatin's saying is, "You can be a nudist, and you can be a Buddhist. But a nudist Buddhist is just too much for people".
Thankfully there is a movement now to develop a breed of chicken that is a high meat yielding bird but also has the foraging ability to be a good pastured poultry product.
The birds we ordered this year are a slightly different breed that has been developed for this purpose. They are called Heavy White Cornish Chickens. They still grow fast like the confinement house chickens do but the difference is in the first week of development. They are developed to grow slow for the first week which gives their bone structure time to develop preventing leg problems in the future. Also they have been bred so that you do not have to restrict feed intake.
So far we have been very impressed with these birds. We have had them for 5 days now and have not lost a single chick. (2-3% loss in the first few weeks is normal due to some chicks just being runts, sick from the hatchery, and such) But, we have also been much more vigilant with keeping a clean environment in our brooder this year as well, more than last year. So I'm not exactly sure if the zero loss of chickens so far is due to the improved breed, or improving the care of the chicks. Time will tell, but I have noticed that these chicks scratch around much more than the regular Cornish Cross chickens did last year. We'll keep you posted and see how this breed does.
Marshall has really enjoyed watching the chicks. Unfortunately he thinks that the way to hold a chicks is around the neck and then swinging it around while screaming, "AAAAHHH BLAAAHH YEEEEE!!!". He gets a little excited. :) He'll learn. (the chick survived the ordeal just so you know).
It is so exciting to see the natural, I believe Biblical, industry of husbandry developing in a very big way in our country. I thank the Lord that he has allowed me and my family to participate in raising his animals and meeting the needs of our friends and families as far as he has.
