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What to Expect When Raising Meat Birds and the Lessons I Learned From Mine - One Girl’s Rant
It is exciting to see backyard chickens so in vogue across the country. This is the time of year when many chicken-rearing households assess their flock and plot and plan for springtime chicks. In true gateway fashion raising hens has lead some of us to contemplate raising livestock for an additional food source. Meat birds seem like the next logical step. Knowing that an animal has been treated humanely and was raised without hormones and antibiotics is certainly appealing, but what does raising them really entail? This past spring The Husband and I decided to find out. In March we bought our first half dozen Cornish Rock chicks. With two years experience keeping laying hens under our belt we approached this new endeavor confidently. We did our homework. We had lengthy discussions with our chicken Sensei at October Rose Farm. We strove to tilt karmic forces in our favor by building a mobile chicken pen out of an old Ikea bed frame. We researched tried-and-true chicken pasturing methods from experts on YouTube. We felt as ready as we’d ever be. But a worry kept gnawing at the back of my mind. What about the end game? The dispatchment. Did I have …