Thinking about how to grow a chicken at home? A similar question is most often asked by novice farmers. In the article you will find some tips, as well as detailed instructions on how to grow a bird in a private compound. This information will be useful for the most part to inexperienced breeders, but professionals will also discover something new.
Why do people breed chickens at home?
Have you decided to grow chicken in the country? To begin with, you need to determine the breed of poultry, as breeders brought them quite a lot, each has unique characteristics. For example, if you want to raise chickens for meat, you are best to prefer broilers. And if you plan to create a business selling eggs, you will have to purchase several layers. And for those who just want to breed birds for their own use, it is better to buy something in between - meat and egg breed, which will provide all the necessary products.
Do not forget that, depending on the breed, the conditions for growing birds can vary significantly. For example, broilers are kept exclusively in cages and lead a sedentary lifestyle. For laying hens, you need to organize a lot of nests where they can lay eggs, but meat and egg breeds prefer extensive open spaces. Therefore, before you start building a chicken coop, think carefully about what breed and for what purpose you plan to grow at home.
Selection of meat and egg breeds for breeding
There are quite a few meat and egg breeds of birds that are suitable for home breeding. Each has unique features. We will name the main breeds that are suitable for a novice breeder:
- Moscow black. Egg production ranges from 170 to 180 eggs per year, and the average weight varies from 2.5 to 3.5 kilograms.
- Kuchinsky anniversary. The weight of an adult is in the region of 3-4 kilograms, and the egg production rate is high: up to 220 pieces per year.
- Russian white. Small hens, weighing from 1.6 to 2.5 kilograms, the number of eggs reaches 250 per year.
In addition to the above indicators, other features should be taken into account: the nature of the bird, average life expectancy, resistance to disease, and so on. For more information, contact the breeder.
Building a chicken coop
To properly grow chicken at home, you need to organize a good home that will protect the birds from cold, rain and strong winds. In addition, the chicken coop will have to constantly maintain cleanliness and order, so it is necessary to provide at the planning stage how exactly you will rake out the litter and change the used straw to fresh. You should also decide on the material in advance, because not everyone is suitable for construction. If your goal is to build a reliable structure, it is best to use wood, bricks, cinder blocks and slate. It is worth thinking about the insulation in advance, since in winter the bricks cool down quickly enough, and the coop should be warm.
It often happens that free space for the construction of a separate chicken coop is simply impossible to find. In this case, you can breed birds in ordinary sheds that were previously used for other purposes. Well, if you decide to grow broiler chickens at home, then you can use ordinary street cages, which are easy to transfer indoors for the winter. If you organize a comfortable home for birds, you can achieve maximum productivity. Layers will produce more eggs, and broilers will gain live weight faster.
How to choose laying hens?
The question of how to raise laying hens at home worries many novice farmers, because building a chicken egg business is very simple, especially if you have a private farm at your disposal. Once the chicken coop is ready, you can go to the nearest market or poultry farm to buy young chickens. It is best to do this in the spring time of the year, so that the bird has time to get stronger and begin to rush to the cold. However, no one prohibits the purchase of six-month-old laying hens in order to immediately receive profit from their business.
The choice of adult individuals should be competent, based on the external signs of the bird, since some unscrupulous sellers may give out old chickens that no longer rush for young ones. Pay special attention to the crest (it should be red) and feathery lobes (in young birds they are bright pink). Also, in young individuals, the stomach will be significantly larger and softer than in older chickens.
Breeding chickens
Still decided to grow laying hens or broiler chickens from young chickens? To do this, you must follow certain rules for care, so that young growth and development develops as quickly as possible. The list below presents only the main nuances that must be observed unconditionally.
- It is necessary to raise chickens at a temperature of 25 to 30 degrees.
- Daylight hours should be at least 17 hours a day. For this, additional lighting sources are used.
- A balanced diet should be made.
- It is worth regularly including vitamin supplements.
Disease prevention deserves special attention. For this purpose, from time to time it is necessary to add a weak potassium permanganate solution or special preparations to the chicks' water, which can be purchased at any veterinary pharmacy.
Should I buy an incubator?
On some large farms, you can find special devices that allow you to hatch chickens without the participation of a chicken. This method of breeding has proven itself only on the best side, since the incubator allows you to control the optimum temperature of the air inside using a special program.
However, it is worthwhile to understand that such equipment is quite expensive, so it will only be relevant to use it in truly large enterprises. In the household, he will pay for himself in only a few months.
How to save on feed?
If you have ever been able to raise broiler chickens at home, then you probably know how expensive quality feed is. At various thematic forums, breeders can hear complaints about the fact that compound feed and even grain will cost a pretty decent amount, so keeping chickens at home is a futile task. However, you should understand that such comments can be written by people in a fit of despair, so many opinions may not be true.
There is a pretty good way that allows you to save a significant amount of money on feed in the warm season. It consists in the fact that in the summer the bird is fed only with what the earth gives us. It will be enough to build a small aviary out of the net, so the hens themselves will begin to seek food for themselves. Grass, insects, various worms and other nutritious animals will be used. In addition, birds can be fed with waste from the table: eggshells, vegetable scraps and more.
Winter maintenance
It should be understood that it is several times more difficult to grow chicken at home in winter than in summer, so you should prepare for the cold in advance. Firstly, it is necessary to equip a special room in which birds can wait out severe frosts. For this, even the most ordinary wooden shed is suitable. It will only be necessary to board all the windows with boards, insulate the cracks in the roof and install, if necessary, an additional heating source (stove, potbelly stove, electric heater, etc.). However, the fact that birds should be kept warm in winter does not mean that they should not receive fresh air. For this, a ventilation system must be present in the barn, which will ensure the movement of hot and cold air currents. In addition, the barn will have to be cleaned regularly from litter and the old litter should be replaced with a new one. If you provide birds with quality care in the winter, in the spring they will give you offspring.
How to raise chickens in the summer?
We decided to thoroughly understand how to raise chickens? Then you should pay attention to the rules for bird care in the summer. Keeping chickens in a barn in the heat is an extremely bad idea, especially if it is not built from bricks, but from old boards - this is an ideal place for the development of parasites. Therefore, in summer it is best to let birds out into the yard. If we are talking about growing hens, then they will need a place in order to lay eggs. However, in the summer, a large number of pathogenic microbes and parasites develop in the room, so it is good to treat the shed or the chicken coop with insecticides or effective folk remedies.
List of Common Diseases
Want to grow chicken for sale? Then you should get acquainted with the main diseases of birds and effective methods of dealing with them. All information you are interested in will be presented below:
- Smallpox - red spots appear on the skin of the bird, after which it practically ceases to eat food. To combat the scourge, it is recommended to use a three percent solution of furatsilin or special antibiotics (0.5 mg of active substance per individual).
- Pseudo-plague is a disease in which the bird begins to breathe very hard, lies on its side and stretches its neck. Unfortunately, a remedy for this disease has not yet been found, so the sick bird is simply slaughtered and burned to prevent the spread of infection to the rest of the livestock.
- Streptococcus - the symptoms of the disease are fever, decreased egg production, joint inflammation and even cramps. This disease is treated with strong antibiotics, the dosage of which should be prescribed by an experienced specialist.
As you can see, some diseases can be extremely dangerous for birds, so preventive measures should be taken in advance. To do this, you need to regularly clean the cells, treat the barn from parasites, change the water in the drinking bowls daily and use only high-quality and fresh feed.
The carriers of diseases are also rats, for which the chicken coop is a favorite habitat. During construction it is necessary to take this into account: a concrete foundation and a fence in the form of a metal mesh are sufficient, the roof can be covered with slate. These materials will become a reliable barrier against the penetration of rodents.
How long does a chicken live?
If you take good care of your household, then a healthy chicken can live from 5 to 10 years. Although practice shows that keeping too old individuals does not make much sense. They rush much worse than young chicken, and the meat becomes tough enough over time and loses its taste. As a rule, individuals are killed with a decrease in egg production, so that young birds get more feed. Experienced farmers believe that the third year is the best time to slaughter chicken. If the farmer keeps the bird longer, he will work at a loss.
Conclusion
We hope our article helped you figure out how to grow chicken at home. If you still have any questions, we suggest watching a short video in which experienced farmers share their knowledge about the cultivation of birds in a private farm. Perhaps this information will allow you to do your favorite thing, which will bring a stable income for many years.
As you can see, raising broiler chickens or laying hens in the household is not such a difficult task as it might seem at first glance. It will be enough to choose a suitable room, provide quality bird care and fight diseases in time in case of symptoms. If you do everything right, then breeding birds will bring you complete pleasure.