For rearing should be selected young growth of birds, healthy by their appearance.
Healthy chickens are mobile, respond well to external stimuli, to sound, they have taut tummies, umbilical cords do not show any bleeding traces, shiny fluff, even.
They stand firmly on their feet, wings tightly pressed to the body.
Sick chickens are characterized by saggy tummies with poorly tightened not dried umbilical cord, wings lowered down, gait sluggish, staggering.
There is also no reaction to any irritants, the chickens stand aside and do not participate in the general bustle.
Rearing chicks
In the process of caring for chickens you need to constantly monitor their weight, so that there is an opportunity to correct the existing state of affairs if some of the chicks due to a number of reasons began to lag behind in development, grow poorly and eat.
Most quickly the young grow their weight in the first two months of life. Egg-breed chicks become 16 times heavier than their daily norm, meat-and-eggs — 18.5 times, and meat and even more — as much as 30 times.
Chickens should not be given stale, musty feed.. Feed them should begin immediately after they are warmed and dried after hatching from eggs. In order to maintain a comfortable air temperature for them, an electric heater is installed in the room.
The optimal temperature indicators are 18-20 C. From the first day the temperature should stay at elevations of 30-32 С, a week later - 30-28 С, from 10 to 20 a day - 26-24 С, after 21 days - 24-20 С In this case, the humidity indicators should be approximately 70%.
Feeding organization
In the first days it is impossible to imagine food better for small chicks than hard-boiled and well-ground eggs.
To this food, you can add millet, crushed cereal oatmeal, yogurt, low-fat cottage cheese.
On day 3, the diet of small birds becomes somewhat more diverse.
Now it is enriched by finely chopped green alfalfa, nettle, clover. Baker's yeast will also be superfluous. You can also give grated carrots, beets, as well as yellow pumpkin.
The best indicator of satiety is full goiter chicken and healthy sleep after every meal. If growing chickens occurs in spring and autumn or winter, when there is no fresh greens, grass meal can be added to the food. It is also an excellent source of vitamins.
Chickens meat-egg and meat breeds consume much more food than egg breeds, so they should increase the amount of food by 10-15% every day.
In the menu, be sure to include protein-rich foods: cottage cheese, buttermilk, skim milk. Fresh milk should not be given, since the chickens' stomachs are not yet adapted to this heavy food.
When feeding chickens to dairy products, care should be taken to ensure that the chicks always have fresh, clean water that needs to be changed regularly and ensure that no pieces of food get into it.
Drinking bowls are better to fix, since mobile chicks easily overturn light in weight and standing in the center of the room capacity.
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The diet also includes fish or meat and bone meal. If they are not available, they will easily be replaced by meat waste from the kitchen, offal, earthworms.
The last chickens are eaten with great pleasure. In addition, the menu should contain lime supplements. Wood ash can be a good source.
At first it is given in the amount of 0.6 g per head, gradually increasing to 4 g at the age of 2 months.
Chicks should be given food at intervals of two hours; after 10 days of life, the number of feedings becomes less — up to 5 times a day; from 2 months of life, 4-time feeding is set at intervals of up to 4 hours.
It is desirable that there should always be coarse sand in a separate special feeder for the chickens. Gentle digestive tracts of chicks, in addition, very poorly assimilate the shells of grains and croup, so the first time they should always be sifted through a sieve.
Be sure to supplement the food is fish oil, which is desirable to give in the morning, mixing it with crushed grits or grains.
While the chickens are eating, it is worthwhile to carefully watch out which ones are stronger and bouncy, and which constantly stand aside, being content with food debris. Such weak chicks should be removed from time to time by feeding them separately, until they “revive”.
The room
Approximately 1 sq.m. the area should be placed about 12 chicks daily age.
At first, this is for them a fairly large space, but chickens grow, take up more and more space, and the area becomes optimal for them.
Care must be taken to ensure that the air in this place is ventilated, but at the same time strong drafts are undesirable.
Need to regularly change the feed. It should not be allowed to dampen and an unpleasant, peculiar smell appeared in the room.
Any dampness is deadly for chickens. They can easily get sick and die. Their fragile immunity is susceptible to many viruses at this stage of life.
Run under the hen
A good option for growing chickens is to run them under the hen.
She, like no one else, is able to take care of her offspring. The hen incubates the eggs, and when the time of hatching begins, the chicks are gently removed.
Chickens are born, and they are placed one by one in a special basket, box or box, at the bottom of which is covered with soft tissue.
From above, the container is closed with gauze and put the box in a warm room with a temperature of up to 30 C. Again, start up the chickens under the hen, when all the output is over.
Compliance with all the rules will help to give birth to healthy offspring of chickens, and proper care and maintenance of the young chicks with complete and diverse feeds, constant warm room temperature will help grow healthy and strong individuals, which, in turn, will give a good offspring.
At first the temperature and growth of chickens will have to constantly monitor.
But the time spent is worth it. Good care for chickens is both healthy offspring and a good profit in the future, so you should be patient before you buy day-old chickens, care for them and watch them turn into strong, healthy chickens from immature yellow lumps.
