How to grow broiler chickens at home successfully?

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

When you decide to raise broiler chickens in your private home, do not be afraid that you will not be able to create suitable conditions. Growing broiler chickens at home is not much different from breeding other chickens. Many, having tried to deal with broilers just for themselves, assessed the ratio of possible economic effect and labor costs, deciding to create a small farm for several hundred heads.

Most people when buying poultry meat prefer these chickens, whose weight usually does not exceed 2 kg. After all, young broiler meat is considered dietary, it is quite tender and soft, so it is recommended to give it to small children and the elderly.

Before you start growing broiler chickens at home, you should prepare everything you need for them. To begin with, you should take care of the place where the little chickens will be. These can be special boxes or cages with equipped light and heating. In the first 10 days, the bird needs round-the-clock lighting, thendaylight hours are gradually reduced to 16 hours. The area of the cage should not be too large or small, optimally, if 1 baby has 30 cm2.

In order to control the level of temperature and humidity, install a thermometer and a hygrometer in the room equipped for chickens. So, in order for the cultivation of broiler chickens at home to start successfully, for daily babies it is necessary to maintain +30 ºС, lowering the temperature once a week by no more than 3 ºС. +21 ºС is enough for three-week-old chickens.

It is worth noting that it is better to buy such chickens on specialized farms, where you can be guaranteed the sale of meat breed chickens that can grow up to 1.2-1.7 kg in just a few months. Daily babies are the cheapest, but their survival rate is quite low, they are too sensitive to the smallest changes in temperature, humidity, and food changes. If you want to be sure that the majority of purchased hens will grow up in your home, then it is better to purchase 10-day-old babies. It will be enough for them to provide room temperature in the room where they will be, to make lighting over the feeder and drinker.

Special attention must be paid to the nutrition of chickens. It is better to purchase specialized feed for broilers, made taking into account the age characteristics of the bird. In addition to nutrition, it is worth taking care of the conditions for finding chickens. In a cage or box, it is advisable to lay a thick bed of sawdust,sunflower husks or crushed corn stalks covered with wood shavings. There should be at least 1 kg of this litter per chick. As it gets dirty, only the top layer is changed.

If you do not have the opportunity to buy good compound feed, then the feeding of broilers must be organized as follows: the feed mixture should include corn, wheat, barley, oatmeal and sunflower cake in a ratio of 8:4:3:2:3. Growing broiler chickens at home in this way gives good results: in 2 months indoors, chickens weighing 1.2-1.7 kg are obtained, some individuals reach 2 kg.