If you’ve been thinking about getting broiler chickens, yay! That’s so exciting! Raising your own meat is so fun and so rewarding, but it can be overwhelming to get started.
So today we’re going to be talking about a few things that you need to do to order your broiler chicks. We’ll cover where and how to get them.
I have been raising my own chicken for around ten years now, and I wanted to walk through a few of the steps that I go through when ordering chicks.
Decide Which Breed of Broiler Chicken You Want
The first step is to decide on the type of broiler chicken you want. There are really two main breeds Cornish Cross and Freedom Ranger.
I’m not going to go into that too much in this video. I will be doing a video about that in the future that you should check out.
For the sake of this video, we’re going to assume you are going with Cornish Cross because that is the most popular broiler chicken breed, and that’s personally what I use.
Where Can you Buy your Broiler Chickens?
Well, you can get them from a variety of different hatcheries, but the three hatcheries that I’ve used and have really good experiences with are Welp, Hoover Hatchery and Murray McMurray.
All three hatcheries have very different prices. You can check them out on their website.
But I ended up sticking with the hatchery that has the cheapest prices because for a while I was growing birds for sale and every little cent of margin counts when you’re doing this for profit.
So I ended up deciding to stick with Welp Hatchery because I couldn’t really find a difference among those three different hatcheries other than prices. I’ve been very, very happy with them.
I actually just ordered our 2024 chicks from Welp a few days ago, so we’ll be getting them in a few weeks.
Broiler Chicken Hatchery Distance from your Home
If you want to consider more than price when thinking about getting chicks, another good thing to consider is the distance from your house.
All of these hatcheries are in Iowa and I’m in Minnesota, so it’s very, very close.
But if you’re in California and one of your hatcheries is close to you on the West Coast and another one that you’re thinking of getting is on the East Coast, choosing the one that is closer will be easier on your chicks as they won’t have as far to travel.
If you’re looking for more quick tips on choosing a hatchery, I recommend checking out my video, Where to Get Your Chickens From.
When Should you Order your Broiler Chicks?
So you’ve decided where to get your chicks from? Yay! The next thing that you really want to consider is when to get your chicks.
The most important thing when you’re booking and ordering your broiler chickens is to make sure that you have your butcher plans in place before you order the chicks.
Are you going to be butchering them yourselves, or are you going to be taking them to a butcher?
Processors can book out really, really far in advance. I’ve called some before in February and they were already booked for the entire next summer, so make sure that you check with your processor before you order your birds to make sure that your dates are available.
Cornish Cross mature in 7 to 8 weeks and you really don’t want to let them go longer than that.
If you’re getting into that 10-12 week range, you’re going to run into a lot more health issues, which you don’t want to deal with.
So get your butcher date set. Now.
It’s not as big of a deal if you’re butchering them yourselves, although you still want to make sure you’re clearing your calendar and that you’re setting that date on your calendar.
So like I said, I just ordered a couple batches of birds for this summer and I already put on my planner when we have chicks arriving and when we’re butchering.
Do Vaccination and Gender Matter for your Broiler Chickens?
Let’s talk now about the different options that the hatcheries will give you.
When you check out you’re going to have a few different things to select. You will have to choose the gender of the bird. Are you getting males, females or straight run/unsexed birds?
Unsexed tends to be cheaper, so I normally go for that because I don’t really care for the males vs females.
The males aren’t going to get aggressive. They’re not going to start crowing because they’re processed at such a young age.
If you want all of your birds to finish at a similar size, you could get just males or just females because males are going to grow a little faster and be bigger than your females.
If you want every bird to be similar size, stick with one of the sexes.
Some people, because Cornish Cross tend to grow super fast, want to slow down that growth to try to get a healthier bird and avoid some of the health issues. In that case, choosing female birds is a good option because they do tend to grow a little bit slower and not get as large.
Another decision you will have to make is whether you will do vaccinations. Are you going to do a Coccidious Spray?
I always say no to these because I try to raise my birds as naturally as possible. I’ve never had issues, so I don’t select it. Plus I don’t have to pay for it!
And that’s pretty much the basics to ordering your broiler chickens. I am so excited for you! Yay to growing your own meat!
Over the course of the summer, we will be making a lot more videos on raising birds, processing birds and answering a lot of questions around broilers in general.
So stick around, subscribe and we’ll see you in the next video
