Meat birds,motorbikes and more rain

Managed to get to town and back this morning without getting totally soaked which was quite an exceptional outcome considering the weather.For anyone who, and I mean anyone out there that is reading this blog other than me I will just mention if you haven't read the previous post that I take my partner Siteri into work and pick her up on our sole means of transport which is a motorbike.Now a motorbike is great in the fine sunny warm weather that we have here for about 10 months of the year and we both just love it.In the rain it is a another matter altogether,but in an offbeat sort of way it is still fun only because it is not cold here.All I do when it is raining is slow down to about jogging pace and stay well to the side of the road thereby hopefully avoiding becoming a grill ornament for an express bus which don't slow down for anything here in Fiji nor do they take prisoners if you know what I mean.We have managed to avoid becoming road kill three times so far.
As far as I can tell we have the only motorbike in the district possibly the province which has a population of about 37,000 people.I have been living here for 2 years now and have only seen two other motorbikes and they where passing through.The town,Rakiraki has a population of a couple of thousand give or take a thousand.So we where and still are a real novelty when we go anywhere on our motorbike,kids yell,women laugh and men stand slack jawed.
Anyhow I seem to have lost the plot here as I was going to write about meat birds or broilers so I had better get cracking before I get sidetracked again which for me is not that hard.Now for those who are new to the poultry business meat birds are the ones we eat,think KFC if you will.
They have been breed over the years to have the quickest and greatest growth rate of any living thing on the planet.They go from 1 day old chicks that weigh about the same as a cigarette lighter to a 2 kg slaughter able bird in about 35 days give or take a few days.There body weight will increase 10 fold in the first 10 days and when they have reached the 2 kg weight they will have consumed approximately 4 kg of food that is to say in technical terms a feed conversion ratio of 2 to 1.My last crop of birds had a FCR of 2.71 to 1 which by big commercial grower standards is terrible.The world record was set just recently by a Tegal shed in NZ it was 1.47 to 1.The industry standard in Australia /NZ I think is somewhere around 1.75 to 1.
Now I would be happy and am hoping to achieve and think I can without to much stress on both me and the birds to get my FCR down to about 2 to 1.
Farming meat birds is totally different than keeping chickens that lay eggs.Meat birds are more like feathered pigs.My birds get to go outside in an enclosed little yard unlike my other bird that just roam around the property. I have to fence the meat birds in lest the other chickens peck them to death or the mongooses kill them.The meat birds will just sit there and let it happen,they get that obese they can't walk more than a few steps before they flop down on the ground, there wings aren't for flying there more like training wheels on a kid's bike.
Because they grow that quick they are prone to dropping dead just as quickly,any number of things can kill them off as I have learn't.So having said that I am now going to venture out into the rain and put some covers up around there shed which is open most of the time due to the heat. As the wind has changed direction and is going to start blowing and I don't want them to get wet and cold because like I have just said they will end up dead on there backs with there legs in the air which is not what I like to see.
Cheerio for now
Jim