It’s time for our planned summer break. The broilers are all in freezers or customer bellies. Just pullets and a few turkeys on pasture. Our daily workload has dropped significantly. Now all we have to do is feed and water in the morning, milk the goats and just check everybody a couple of times and we’re set. Well, we have to soak the hog wallow a couple of times too. This accomplishes two things; drains the hot water out of the 100 yard long hose so they will have cool water to drink again and gives them a cool place to pig it up.
Now, when I get up before the sun I don’t have to spend 15-20 minutes moving chicken tractors, feeding and watering. I just open the chicken house door, feed there, water the rabbits, shower and head to the office.
We have waited all spring for this day. We partied like it was 1999…well we watched the new True Grit and ate pizza after the kids went to bed. Now we’ll tick off the days till we get our last batch of broilers mid-August. We’re thinking about scrapping our big order for fall Cornish Cross chicks and ordering a variety of alternative broilers just to try them side by side. We thought Kosher King, S&G Heritage White, Freedom Rangers and Moyer’s K-22. Let me know what you think in the comments section. Also, give me suggestions for alt. broilers just in case I am missing a good option.
Just a side note, I took a hog panel off of one of the hoop chicken tractors to give the pullets a bit of extra shade. They seemed to appreciate the shade, I appreciate how many different ways I can use those chicken tractors.
Chism Heritage Farm 
Have fun with the time off! Hope you get to cool down a bit too. I’ve never heard of any of those broiler breeds except Freedom Ranger – and Moyer’s K-22 sounds like a kind of rifle to me, lol…it will be an interesting experiment to see how they all turn out.
We are pretty jazzed about the possibilities too but from what research I have done I have some concerns. This fall will be a test drive. We’ll try it and see.
I will be really interested in hearing your opinion on the different “alternative” birds this fall! The Freedom Rangers were the only ones I had ever heard of, before you mentioned the others, and I have been toying with the thought of raising a *small* test batch (20-30 birds) to see how they do. The K-22’s sounds pretty good from the description, but I can’t say the Kosher Kings interest me all that much… I guess I’m too biased against colored birds. After working at a processing facility and doing over 3,000 chickens, and who knows how many turkeys (over the 3,000 mark) I have really come to appreciate those white birds! LOL. But I suppose if the Kosher Kings grew well enough and had a good feed conversion ratio, then I could get over this silly prejudice.
Which bird would you say you have the most interest in?
If you want a white bird go with the S&G Heritage White.
Darby is pretty jazzed about the white. He had a friend raise a test batch in Florida, she shipped him some of the finished birds and the feedback on taste was far superior to his CX. So, I’m excited to see which of them tastes the best, though I’m leaning toward a white bird for similar reasons to what you listed.