A Detailed Beginner's Guide to the Basics of Chicken Raising
SummaryBeginners raising chickens need to choose easy-to-raise breeds, buy healthy chicks, then set up a professional brooder room, pay attention to heating equipment, prepare suitable feeding utensils, and carry out scientific feeding. During the feeding process, professional disease prevention and disinfection equipment needs to be prepared, and professional veterinary personnel also need to be arranged. In daily life, pay attention to observing the health status of the flock. You can judge whether the flock is healthy by feed intake, water intake, and the shape of droppings. If abnormalities appear, isolate and treat them promptly.
1. Prepare the brooder room
Newly bought chicks are still very delicate and need a professional brooder room for raising. Brooder rooms generally come in three types: flat litter brooder rooms, flat wire-floor brooder rooms, and multi-tier brooder rooms. The heating equipment in the brooder room is also very important, as this can increase the survival rate of the chicks and reduce losses on the chicken farm.
2. Prepare feeding utensils such as feed troughs
Raising chickens requires preparing feed troughs or feed buckets for the chickens to eat from. The materials of feeding utensils include wood, metal, and plastic, and you can choose according to the actual situation and your budget.
3. Prepare the chicken houses for the chicken farm
Chicken houses are divided into growing houses and breeding chicken houses. The purpose of the chicken house is different, so its internal structure and equipment are also different, and you need to switch chicken houses according to each growth stage of the chickens.
4. Prepare disease prevention and disinfection equipment
Disease prevention and disinfection equipment is generally set up at the entrance and exit of the chicken house. It is convenient for disinfection and disease prevention when breeding personnel enter and exit.
5. Hire professional veterinarians or other related professionals.
Professional veterinarians or practitioners can better manage the healthy growth of chickens, can discover sick chickens or abnormal conditions as soon as possible, and timely isolation and treatment can effectively reduce the spread rate, thereby reducing breeding risks, and can also reasonably arrange nutritional feed to ensure the quality of the flock.
6. Learn to observe the daily behavior of the flock
Daily observation is very important. If you want to raise chickens well, you must be able to observe the flock, such as mental state, feed intake, drinking water, droppings, death rate, and so on.
Feed intake: Observe whether the mental state of the flock is good and whether the feed intake has abnormal changes. If abnormal conditions are found, handle them promptly.
Drinking water: If the water intake of the flock suddenly increases, pay attention. Generally, after a viral disease is complicated by a bacterial disease, symptoms of fever will appear, that is, inflammatory reactions within the flock will produce internal heat, and at this time water intake will increase.
Droppings: Droppings can reflect the health level of the flock. If the droppings are normal, it means healthy. If feed droppings, white creamy droppings, or watery droppings appear, and the color of the droppings is abnormal, it means the flock is sick.
Mortality rate: Epidemic diseases will cause mass deaths in the flock. Generally, when virulent diseases, febrile diseases, and poisoning occur, the death rate is faster. Be sure to pay attention to preventing highly virulent influenza, highly virulent Newcastle disease, acute cholera, and other diseases. Therefore, routine vaccines must be given on time; prevention is better than treatment.
Hygiene management: The sanitation and cleaning work of the chicken farm avoids causing some chicken diseases and unnecessary losses.