How to grow a chicken at home: instructions, features and rules

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Thought 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 raise a bird in a private backyard. This information will be useful mostly to inexperienced breeders, but professionals will discover something new for themselves.

Why do people raise chickens at home?

Decided to grow a chicken in the country? First you need to decide on the breed of bird, since breeders have bred quite a lot of them, each has unique characteristics. For example, if you want to raise chickens for meat, your best bet is to go with 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 purchase something in between - a meat and egg breed that will provide all the necessary products.

Don't forgetthat depending on the breed, the conditions for growing poultry 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 carry eggs, but meat and egg breeds prefer vast 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.

Choice of meat and egg breed for breeding

There are quite a few meat and egg breeds of birds that are suitable for home breeding. Each has unique features. Let's name the main breeds that are suitable for a novice breeder:

• Moscow black. Egg production is 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 chickens, 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 diseases, and so on. For more information, contact the breeder.

Building a chicken coop

To properly grow a chicken at home, you need to organize a good home that will protect the bird from cold, rain and strong winds. Besides, inthe chicken coop will have to be constantly kept clean and tidy, so it is necessary to foresee at the planning stage how exactly you will rake out the litter and change the used straw to fresh. You should also decide in advance on the material, because not everyone is suitable for construction. If your goal is to build a reliable structure, then it is best to use wood, bricks, cinder blocks and slate. It is worth thinking about insulation in advance, because in winter the bricks cool down quickly enough, and it should be warm in the chicken coop.

It often happens that it is simply impossible to find free space for building a separate chicken coop. In this case, birds can be bred in ordinary barns that were previously used for other purposes. Well, if you decide to grow broiler chickens at home, then you can use ordinary outdoor cages, which are easy to move indoors for the winter. If you organize a comfortable home for the 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 business on chicken eggs is very simple, especially if you have a private farmstead at your disposal. Once the chicken coop is ready, you can go to the nearest market or poultry farm to purchase young chickens. Betterjust do it in the spring season, so that the bird has time to get stronger and begin to rush until the cold weather. However, no one forbids buying six-month-old laying hens in order to immediately profit from their business.

The choice of adults should be literate, based on the external signs of the bird, since some unscrupulous sellers may pass off old hens that are no longer laying as young ones. Pay special attention to the crest (it should be red) and lobes of birds (in a young bird they are bright pink). Also, young birds will have a significantly larger and softer belly than older chickens.

Chicken breeding

Did you decide to raise laying hens or broiler hens from young chickens? To do this, you must follow certain rules for the care of the young growth and development as quickly as possible. The list below shows only the main nuances that must be observed unconditionally.

1. Chicks need to be raised between 25 and 30 degrees.
2. Daylight hours should be at least 17 hours a day. To do this, use additional light sources.
3. Make a balanced diet.
4. It is worth regularly including vitamin supplements.

Disease prevention deserves special attention. For this purpose, it is necessary from time to time to add a weak solution of potassium permanganate or special preparations to the water of the chicks, which can be purchased at any veterinary pharmacy.

Worth buyingincubator?

On some large farms, you can find special devices that allow chickens to hatch without the participation of a chicken. This breeding method has proven itself only from the best side, since the incubator allows you to control the optimal air temperature inside using a special program.

However, it should be understood that such equipment is quite expensive, so it will only be relevant to use it in really large enterprises. In the household, it will pay for itself only after a few months.

How to save on feed?

If you have ever grown broiler chickens at home, then you probably know how expensive quality feed is. At various thematic forums, breeders can be heard complaining that compound feed and even grain will cost a pretty decent amount, so keeping chickens at home is a futile exercise. However, you should understand that such comments can be written by people in a fit of desperation, 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 lies in the fact that the bird is fed in the summer only with what the earth gives us. It will be enough to build a small aviary from the grid, so the chickens themselves will begin to look for food. Grass, insects will be used,various worms and other nutritious animals. In addition, birds can be fed with table scraps: eggshells, vegetable scraps, and more.

Winter maintenance

It should be understood that growing chicken at home in winter is several times more difficult than in summer, so you should prepare for the cold in advance. Firstly, it is necessary to equip a special room in which the birds can wait out severe frosts. Even the most ordinary wooden barn is suitable for this. It will only be necessary to board up all the windows with boards, insulate the cracks in the roof and, if necessary, install an additional source of heating (potbelly stove, electric heater, and so on). However, the fact that birds should be warm in winter does not mean that they should not get fresh air. To do this, the barn must have a ventilation system that will ensure the movement of hot and cold air flows. In addition, the barn will have to be regularly cleaned of litter and change the old bedding to a new one. If you provide the birds with quality care in the winter, then in the spring they will give you offspring.

How to raise chickens in summer?

Decided to thoroughly understand how to raise chickens? Then you should pay attention to the rules for caring for birds in the summer. Keeping chickens in a barn in the heat is an extremely unfortunate idea, especially if it is built not from bricks, but from old boards - this is an ideal place for the development of parasites. Therefore, in the summer, birds are best released duringyard. If we are talking about growing laying hens, then they will need a place to carry eggs. However, in the summer a large number of pathogenic microbes and parasites develop indoors, so you should treat the barn or chicken coop well with insecticidal preparations or effective folk remedies.

List of common diseases

Would you like to raise a chicken to sell? Then you should familiarize yourself with the main diseases of birds and effective methods of dealing with them. All the information you are interested in will be presented below:

1. Smallpox - red spots appear on the skin of the bird, after which it practically stops eating food. To combat the scourge, it is recommended to use a three percent solution of furacilin or special antibiotics (0.5 mg of the active substance per individual).
2. Pseudo-plague is a disease in which the bird begins to breathe very hard, lies on its side and stretches its neck. Unfortunately, no cure for this disease has yet been found, so sick birds are simply slaughtered and burned to prevent the infection from spreading to the rest of the population.
3. Streptococcus - symptoms of the disease are fever, decreased egg production, inflammation of the joints and even convulsions. This ailment 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 you should take care of preventive measures in advance. This requires regular cleaningcages, treat the barn from parasites, change the water in the drinkers daily and use only high-quality and fresh food.

Rats are also carriers of diseases, for which the chicken coop is a favorite habitat. During construction, this must be taken into account: a concrete foundation and a fence in the form of a metal mesh are enough, 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 farm, a he althy chicken can live from 5 to 10 years. Although practice shows that there is little point in keeping too old individuals. They lay much worse than young chickens, and the meat eventually becomes quite tough and loses its taste. As a rule, individuals are slaughtered at a decrease in egg production, so that young birds get more feed. Experienced farmers believe that the optimal time for slaughtering a chicken is the third year. If the farmer keeps the bird longer, he will work at a loss.

Conclusion

We hope our article helped you figure out how to raise a chicken at home. If you still have any questions, we suggest watching a short video in which experienced farmers share their knowledge about breeding birds in a private backyard. Perhaps this information will allow you to do what you love, which will bring a stable income for many years.

As you can see, rearing broiler or laying hens at homefarming is not such a difficult task as it might seem at first glance. It will be enough to choose a suitable room, provide quality care for the birds and deal with diseases in time in case of symptoms. If you do everything right, then breeding birds will bring you pure pleasure.