Our DIY tractors & 60 CX.

[figit]

My wife, sons and I have been working on a pair of these tractors for a few weeks and finally transitioned our batch of 60 CX out over the weekend. So far so good although we've yet to run the gutter troughs for fermented feed. To date they've primarily been on FF, for now I'm just laying out a thick line of FF on the grass in the morning & afternoon while leaving the dry feed buckets in all day and pulling them at night.

These 12G $19 sale igloo coolers from walmart are working great to feed the plasson bulbs. They don't have a drain but were easy to tap, working on shelves to hang them off the rear. I had planned on wrapping them with a shroud of spare roofing but even baking in the sun all day the water stays cool.

I had a roll of 1/8" HDPE that I cut down to strips and attached via roofing nails to the rears which help is slide along the dew covered grass in the mornings quite well. I had planned on eventually adding wheels with a lever/fulcrum via some scrap from an old bed-frame but they are gliding on this HDPE well enough to where I think I'll leave it be.

 

[casportpony]

I love it! Any idea how much it weighs?

 

[figit]

I love it! Any idea how much it weighs?

Thanks! No idea on weight, it hadn't been much of a concern because we had planned on adding wheels but without that rear 2x4 catching on anything it slides well so far even in tall grass. We've had them outside for a few weeks before putting the chickens in just to weather the wood & make sure panels didn't leak. Like clowns we dragged them around pretending to be moving chickens : o )

When this batch is processed I think we might add strips down the sides and front to further help it slide while offering a bit of an anti-dig barrier.

 

[figit]

Just a quick update, we lost 2 of the 60 birds and successfully processed the rest at 7 weeks on the dot. They averaged just under 5lbs. This is our first batch of meat birds and they seemed absolutely gigantic, I can't imagine what a 7lb bird would be like.

We could only do 7 weeks because of a Yellowstone trip we've been planning for awhile. We also opted for a 12/12 feeding schedule, surely they would have weighed more if we left feed out 24-7 but we decided to sacrifice a bit of potential weight to mitigate any heart issues.

I mounted the burner/scalder and plucker onto our gorilla cart which worked well. My wonderful wife and boys handled the cleaning & soaking while I covered dispatch, plucking and cleaning back-up. After a brine soak for the evening we packaged all of them the following morning where they hit the fridge before transitioning into our freezers.

The only modifications we made to the tractors was to was shift to fermented feed starting on arrival of the birds. We still leveraged the hanging feeders for dry grain but only as a carryover into the evening until we pulled food, they'd eat all the fermented feed by mid day.

We are proud of the results, our young boys helped throughout the entire process and absolutely love them. So far we've air baked 1 and grilled 2. The taste is simply amazing, so much more robust than anything we've gotten at a grocery store or restaurant.

We're 100% hooked and hope to try out red rangers next round. Getting layers back is our next step though, we re-homed our golden comets when we moved from PA to KY and wanted to try meat birds before getting new hens setup. Glad we did but boy do we miss fresh eggs.

 

[Acre4Me]

Nice! Meat Chx are great! At the size you finished, they might fit into an air fryer rotisserie. My AF isn’t too big, and it indicates I can rotisserie up to a 4 or 4.5lb bird.

We also opted for a 12/12 feeding schedule, surely they would have weighed more if we left feed out 24-7 but we decided to sacrifice a bit of potential weight to mitigate any heart issues.

I’ve always heard to give feed 24/7 for first 3 weeks. Then move to preferred schedule. We butcher around 8 weeks and have 1or 2 that begin to seem to struggle. For us, we will probably move to 7 week butcher. We’ve done several batches of meat Chx, but are not doing any this year. Maybe next year.

 

[Penpal]

When you move the tractors, you might try using the Egyptian Method. Get some large dowels, cut in half (or third). Put 3 or under each side. Move the tractor, take the dowel you just lost and put it in front. Repeat, repeat. We have used this successfully several times with heavy furniture.