Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

oops

Garry, try changing the shape of your strainer... picture a dome shaped one or even a cylinder shaped one - alows for greater times spans between cleans

Good idea AM, I would mount it so that it shapes into the tank and in view for easier inspection

The one and only time we ever had a meat bird, it was agro as. Turned out to be a rooster, thought it was a lion LOL Dressed, it weighed 3.1 kg's. I can't wait to have them again. Did you buy fertilised eggs or breed them GD?

Hi Mon,

We bought the meat chickens as day-olds. On this occasion, we bought 25 of them.

In a backyard situation, they grow to about 1.5kg dressed weight in 7 - 8 weeks. We start ours on broiler starter feed but, at about five weeks of age we switch them to pig pellets, cracked corn and free choice greenfeed. We use the pig pellets because they have no medication in them. The cracked corn makes their skin go yellow and imparts a particular flavour to the meat.

We don't get the same growth as the commercial producers do but we end up with a chemical-free chicken that tastes quite unlike anything that you buy in a supermarket.

As you've observed, if you continue to grow them they become big and strong enough to almost be be able to kick your dunny (outhouse for our US friends) door down.

Gary

I got to meet some year-old laying hens the other week. I was amazed how big they were. Also very soft. The eggs they lay are brown or green shelled and smaller than grocery store eggs. Yolks are proportionately bigger and yellower though, and they made some of the best scrambled eggs I think I've ever had. A friend keeps them and lets them out in a fenced portion of the yard so they can get sun and weeds and bugs.

btw, thanks for the definition of 'dunny'. I never would have gotten that one, although we have the same expression using the word 'outhouse'. Now what's 'agro as' mean. From Monya:

agro, as in aggressive or really cranky and mean

really cranky and mean. LOL

GD summed it up, if you gave the chook a baseball bat, he would have hit a home run.

Took me a while to figure out what and where your strainer was GD.. If it's getting blocked, it might be easy to screw a T in and then use 2 strainers, or even a T with bits of pipe filled with holes or slots and strainers on the end, this would almost never get blocked..

Good idea.....Thanks!

GD I had this page open, and my daughter was surfing the forum (she's six) she saw the chicks, thought they were really cute, I found her halfway thru printing the picture twice. We now have it hanging on our door LOL

Hi Stu,

Here's the latest meat chicken photos for your daughter.

They're 21 days old in this most recent photo.

I've included the 7 day old and 14 day old photos for comparison.

Gary

.....and here's the day old ones again. (actually this one was about three days old at the time the photo was taken.

They ain't getting any cuter, but they sure do grow fast.

Strong looking [s]drumsticks[/s] legs...