Wednesday 21 June 2017

We're good for vegetables but what about the meat?

At the end of last year, as is the norm for us, our minds turned to what we want to try in the coming year. In 2016 we'd tried our own chickens as table birds and they were just not worth it. The meat didn't even go round a family Sunday lunch which is no good to us. So after some investigations, we decided to try and find some Ross Cobbs.
Well, turns out they are like hens teeth for the smallholder to get. They are sold as day old chicks but in their thousands!! A sale of 20 to 40 chicks was laughed at! So we tried to get the fertile eggs, again, no luck for the small scale person.
Then Dawn got some as day olds in Wales and she said she'd try and sort us out with eggs if she managed to get hers up and laying, though she has them for table birds like we wanted to. Such a kind offer and we still kept on looking.
We knew a local ish farm shop sells the finished table bird (for £40 I might add!!!) so we went in and got talking with the owner. As luck would have it, he orders in Ross Cobbs every 3 weeks to raise for his shop.  He said we could buy some off him! Perfect, a little bit of luck goes a long way!
So off we went on his next order and picked up 20 day old chicks. We put them straight under the heat and brought them on in the barn for a while.
Last weekend we managed to get them outside. We're hoping to process them for the freezer in another 5 week maybe but that's guess work at the moment.  As they won't be around that long, we (Ste) made a temporary enclosure for them which they seemed to like.  I hope everyone is ready for a but of bare flesh on a Friday afternoon, if not, look away now.  I know, I'm lucky :)

Today they are in their 5th week and are growing rapidly. We're trying hard to make sure they don't put that much weight on that they can't hold their own weight. All they do is eat!!

 
 Grace brought them all from the barn to their new place and being lazy, they were more than happy just to sit on her! 
 Hopefully outside life will have them growing healthily.
Happy Friday everyone :)

5 comments:

  1. Chicken and chips at yours soon then! x

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  2. Nice to see yours looking good, we still have ours on a diet and yes they eat and eat, I have now found a supplier for cobb eggs I have some arriving next week, message me if you want details :-)

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  3. So pleased you got the chickens you were after. I hope you don't mind me asking but is it economical to buy the birds and feed them compared to buying from a supermarket?

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  4. Oh well done on this. I've seen how Dawn's are coming on and now yours, just great!(Nothing wrong with a bit of flesh!)

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  5. We have raised a few Ross Cobbs for our freezer and get ours from Cyril Bason. We usually manage to get some at the same time as a friend so that we share the delivery charge. They are happy to sell as many or as few as you want which is great for us as we only have space to raise a few at a time.

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