Freedom Ranger Nerd Out Thread

[Lelilamom]

Have enjoyed watching the progress of your birds. You have a beautiful setup! I'm jealous of how much space you have to dedicate to your birds. We've been raising meat birds every summer for five years now. We free range ours with a shelter they can go to in rain/sun. I have a similar waterer, only mine is hooked up to a hard line with a float lock on it so it feeds the reserve whenever it gets low. I do have a different feeder that eliminates feed waste. You may see your feed consumption decrease if you change your feeder in both the brooder and outside.

We use a bucket feeder, but we use a 20 gallon tote instead of a five gallon bucket:



We fill it with 50 lbs and the birds have access 24/7.

Here's the ones I built for inside the brooder:



We free range, so they also eat grass, bugs, etc. We processed our last batch at 7wk 4 days and our largest Roo was 7.4 lbs and our smallest hen was 4.2 lbs. We had two die before four weeks from spraddle leg and grouping and two die of heart and kidney failure at 6 weeks (we culled one hen we saw was in distress and she was filled with urine. We disposed of her without saving the meat). We ended up with 26 birds and a total 141 lbs of meat. We spent $112.00 on feed with no feed waste at all. We butchered all our birds ourselves, although we did rent a plucker for $50 last year since we had nearly 30 birds. It took us 4 hours from start to finish including set up and cleanup - we dig a big hole for the waste. You asked about how do kill. We use a Bear Grylls knife and make one complete pass through the neck - we find it the most humane. We use the cones to keep the birds confined, clean and calm. This year we are raising 50 birds and we are bringing them to an Amish farmer who will process them from start to finish for $3.50 a bird. Here's a link to the knife, which is essential to us for making only one cut so the birds aren't aware of what's going on.
https://www.rei.com/rei-garage/product/117078/gerber-bear-grylls-ult-fixed-blade-knife

We raise and process our turkeys the same way with the same setup, only in a different area on our tiny property. Again, no feed loss and big birds.

We raise our layers with the same set up, with a coop and covered run and access to free range yard. No feed loss, but a total waste of money since most are old and now pets that eat for free and don't lay eggs. My husband frequently goes out and asks for volunteers for the soup pot and they all scurry into the coop.

I hope you have a successful harvest!

 

[seanengler]

Have enjoyed watching the progress of your birds. You have a beautiful setup! I'm jealous of how much space you have to dedicate to your birds. We've been raising meat birds every summer for five years now. We free range ours with a shelter they can go to in rain/sun. I have a similar waterer, only mine is hooked up to a hard line with a float lock on it so it feeds the reserve whenever it gets low. I do have a different feeder that eliminates feed waste. You may see your feed consumption decrease if you change your feeder in both the brooder and outside.

We use a bucket feeder, but we use a 20 gallon tote instead of a five gallon bucket:



We fill it with 50 lbs and the birds have access 24/7.

Here's the ones I built for inside the brooder:



We free range, so they also eat grass, bugs, etc. We processed our last batch at 7wk 4 days and our largest Roo was 7.4 lbs and our smallest hen was 4.2 lbs. We had two die before four weeks from spraddle leg and grouping and two die of heart and kidney failure at 6 weeks (we culled one hen we saw was in distress and she was filled with urine. We disposed of her without saving the meat). We ended up with 26 birds and a total 141 lbs of meat. We spent $112.00 on feed with no feed waste at all. We butchered all our birds ourselves, although we did rent a plucker for $50 last year since we had nearly 30 birds. It took us 4 hours from start to finish including set up and cleanup - we dig a big hole for the waste. You asked about how do kill. We use a Bear Grylls knife and make one complete pass through the neck - we find it the most humane. We use the cones to keep the birds confined, clean and calm. This year we are raising 50 birds and we are bringing them to an Amish farmer who will process them from start to finish for $3.50 a bird. Here's a link to the knife, which is essential to us for making only one cut so the birds aren't aware of what's going on.
https://www.rei.com/rei-garage/product/117078/gerber-bear-grylls-ult-fixed-blade-knife

We raise and process our turkeys the same way with the same setup, only in a different area on our tiny property. Again, no feed loss and big birds.

We raise our layers with the same set up, with a coop and covered run and access to free range yard. No feed loss, but a total waste of money since most are old and now pets that eat for free and don't lay eggs. My husband frequently goes out and asks for volunteers for the soup pot and they all scurry into the coop.

I hope you have a successful harvest!

Thanks for the info! Good stuff. I've been pretty pleased with the rain gutter feeder, for how crazy they are when I put the thing in there there is much more minimal feed loss than I thought, despite there still being some. I am however losing A LOT of layer feed to wild birds this year for some reason. It's never happened in the past, but this end of winter/early spring (it's California Central Coast, our spring is a little accelerated), they've been hammering the feed which I give in 10 and 12 pound feeders. I think I'm going to make the switch to the automatic step feeder for those or maybe something PVC related. Those finches/kingfishers seems really determined this year though.

 

[seanengler]

Week 6 Update

Here's a screen shot of the spreadsheet with week 6's numbers. I did not get a weigh in because I worked a 72 hour shift starting Thursday and Friday is weigh in day. My wife has enough chores to do between feeding/watering all the animals and her day job to be weighing the rangers, haha!

Some notes from week 6, they're all still incredibly active. No health issues to report. Feed consumption wasn't as increased this week as I thought, however we didn't give them as much as I think they could have been eating because the feeder was nearly empty for the twice a day feedings. We've gone to 2 VERY full feedings for week 7 or 3 smaller feedings if one of us is home. Something related to feeding I've started is withholding food for about an hour when I move the pen each day because without the food to distract them they go nuts on the new grass foraging and scratching, then in about an hour the thrill is gone and their foraging level returns to normal and I give them their feed back.

Predator issues, we have had no issues. Electric netting perimeter fencing and hot wire around the base of the pen has been great and easy to work with. Bungee cords holding down the top door haven't been messed with and there's no visible animal signs near the pen. We have foxes, coyotes, weasels, badgers, raccoons, opossums, bobcats, barn cats, neighbors' dogs, the occasional mountain lion and occasional black bear. I am sure 26 tasty birds in a pen have not gone unnoticed, so I'm pleased with the predator control.

 

[seanengler]

Week 7 Update

So nothing really to report this week other than some weird feed numbers. I'm not sure if my record keeping this week was off, or if the birds were really getting after it eating wise. As you'll see in the chart, the per bird consumption for week 7 is way up over week 6, which doesn't really keep in line with the consumption trends. So today I weighed and took pictures on the scale to see what they consumed and what the consumed today multiplied out over a week was 3.24 pounds. So I think week 7's numbers SOMEHOW got messed up I have no idea how and realistically, somewhere around 3 pounds is a little more accurate I think, but it's too late now. Pretty bummed. I also did not get live weights on the birds because they are TOO big/wide to actually fit on my scale now. So, I will re assess this week and maybe get our bathroom scale out there to do some weigh ins for week 8, lol. They are giant though, just absolutely huge. Super active still and foraging quite a bit. They are able to fly up and out of the pen when I leave the hatch open while tending to them, impressive for their size.





Today I also took some before and after pictures of the spots on the pasture where the pen has been.

Here are two runs down the hill where you can see the manure had burned the grass in the distinct 8x8 pen footprint.
Roughly 10-14 days have passed since the pen was on some of these spots. Some spots the pen was there for 12 hours, sometimes 24, sometimes 36. I've been experimenting with the density of the pasture grasses, the number of birds and time on a spot. As you can see, there have been manure/nitrogen burns.


Here are those same spots about a month since the pens were on them:



Notice the dark green color to the grass. I am amazed at how well this recovered especially since this pasture is dry, it relies solely on rain. I am in a semi arid climate, we've had about 21" of rain since October and it's been about 10-14 days since our last rain, so at least half of this recovery was done dry. Pretty cool, I'm looking forward to running some sheep behind them or even bringing over some cattle from my parent's ranch.

 

[pioneerchick816]

Your pasture looks awesome!! Thanks for that comparison too

Also, looking back when you very first put them out. When they were 3 1/2 weeks old, how did they do at first with drinking from that type of waterer? I use those too but my birds were much bigger when I switched them over. They had a little learning curve even then. Did the littles figure it fairly quickly?

 

[seanengler]

Your pasture looks awesome!! Thanks for that comparison too

Also, looking back when you very first put them out. When they were 3 1/2 weeks old, how did they do at first with drinking from that type of waterer? I use those too but my birds were much bigger when I switched them over. They had a little learning curve even then. Did the littles figure it fairly quickly?

It only took a couple hours for them to figure it out. When I first put them in there I didn't even bother trying to show them the waterer because they were so dazed from the move. About an hour later I went back out and stuck my finger in there and got water to overflow getting their attention. Came back another 1-2 hours later and multiple birds were then drinking from the waterer.

 

[pioneerchick816]

Awesome. Thanks

it really keeps down spilling & I think it's much cleaner

 

[seanengler]

Awesome. Thanks

it really keeps down spilling & I think it's much cleaner

Yeah I love it, the cups stay perfectly clean and water is crystal clear. I have used the same cups for my egg layer flock too, just tapped them right into the 5 gallon buckets themselves. Such an effective/affordable waterer.

 

[seanengler]

Week 8 update!

So Friday the 17th, the birds were 8 weeks old. Here's a snap shot of the data thus far.



Note, the average live weight for week 8 was taken at random. I pulled an average looking cockerel and an average looking pullet. They are much bigger than I thought at this stage! I finally dug out an old fishing scale I forgot I had to weigh them, put them in a bucket and hung the bucket from the scale. So, next week at 9.5 weeks I plan on getting them processed. I will post some random final live weights and some pressed weights once I get them back. Additionally, I was still using my previous scale method for the week 5 numbers, so who knows how accurate those were. The birds were so fidgety it made them hard to weigh on the scale.

Freedom Ranger's website says they're ready to process in about 9-11 weeks. I started my birds on 24% feed, downgraded to 20% and then to 18%. So we're right on track if not a little ahead of the game here weight wise. Week 8 I also kept their feed around 12-13 pounds a day and they consumed pretty much all of it every day. This final week I have them up around 14-15 pounds a day.

 

[Lelilamom]

Fantastic progress! Looking forward to your final numbers!