Getting Ready for 25 chicks

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Last Tuesday, 44 youth from across Angelina County came to the Extension office and each of them picked up a box full of day old chicks to raise for the broiler competition at the Angelina County Fair on April 18.

Each exhibitor starts off with a box of 25, day-old chicks randomly sorted and delivered to start off this competition.

Avery Boles, a 10-year-old fourth grader from Huntington was there to pick hers up. This is Avery’s second year to show broilers at the show. She and her two older brothers, David and Abram, will all be raising chickens and competing in the Angelina County Fair.

Avery says her favorite part of raising chickens is getting to play with them and watch them grow up. On the other hand, her least favorite part is having to feed and water every day no matter what else you have going on.

Of these 44 FFA and 4-H entries, only 30 will make it to the auction at the conclusion of the Fair on Saturday, April 22.

Avery Boles, a 10-year-old fourth grader from Huntington, checks on her chicks she will show at this year’s Angelina County Fair.

A “broiler” is a chicken bred specifically to grow muscle efficiently and to be eaten. Their genetics are very different from the egg producing breeds we have in the back-yard egg-laying flock. Raising broiler chickens is an excellent youth project for beginners to livestock exhibiting. Chickens are considerably easier to handle, require less space, and are less expensive than other species.
Chickens are excellent for several reasons. Show birds can be raised in a backyard shed or a garage; they do not need a large amount of land. And broilers can often be raised in urban areas where larger animals would be impractical. In fact, it is recommended that broilers be raised in a good shelter to maximize growth and prevent attack by predators. Avery told me that she and her brothers have a set of pens set up in their barn behind the house.

Simple, inexpensive materials can be used to construct an eight by eight-foot broiler pen. The birds must be housed to protect the them from the weather as well as any dog, cat or other creature that has improper intentions.

This is a short-term livestock project lasting only six weeks. The quick time frame of only six weeks is very typical of market conditions. On a commercial scale, it typically takes only 6-7 weeks to raise a broiler to market weight.

The broiler show certainly provides everyone an equal starting point on their way to the competition. All chicks that students receive for a show are provided by a single hatchery. The chicks are the same breed and hatched on the same day. The birds are wing banded and randomly assigned to each student. This removes all bias in the selection of chicks and their assignment to the participants.

A broiler chicken eats less than two pounds of feed for every pound of body weight gain. Therefore, a six pound broiler requires only 12 pounds of feed to complete its six week grow-out cycle.

At the county fair, only the best three broilers are shown in competition. Thus, the remainder of the box of 25 never make it to the showgrounds.

With only three making the final cut to go to the Fair, there will be many more needing to go into the freezer. I know of youth who sell off their smaller chickens as fryers as they near the county fair.

So if you know Avery Boles (or another 4-H or FFA exhibitor that is raising broilers), you could probably support them by purchasing their locally grown birds that just didn’t make the cut at the Fair.

Cary Sims
Cary Sims is the County Extension Agent for agriculture and natural resources for Angelina County. His email address is cw-sims@tamu.edu Educational programs of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service are open to all people without regard to race, color, sex, disability, religion, age, or national origin.

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