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When a new wildlife lover masters a vegetable garden, he will think about getting animal products. Breeding chickens at home for beginners - the first experience of commodity production of meat and eggs. Chickens are the most tolerant of care deficiencies, almost omnivorous and friendly. This is almost a waste-free production - litter, eggs, meat, feather - everything goes to work.
Conditions for keeping livestock
First of all, it should be determined whether seasonal or year-round bird herd will be kept. For summer time, enough light shelter and walking area. In winter you need a warm barn. In the summer in order to eat eggs, you need to buy chicken pullets. For beginners, breeding chickens at home all year round, determines the quality of chickens. It is better to buy a batch of daily chicks at the poultry farm with the guarantee that the livestock will be pedigree and zoned.
It is necessary to read the literature and determine the physiological norms of housing and feeding of chickens. Some facts about the conditions of breeding chickens will need to know in advance.
When the floor is kept, the room should have an area of 5 chickens per 1 square meter. The temperature of the content is not lower than 5-7 degrees. The room should be warm, bright, dry, egg-laying depends on it. At night, regardless of the season, chickens should be indoors, equipped with perches. On the perch, each hen is set aside at 20 cm and all of them should be placed on the same level.
In a bird cage, the bird develops faster, rushes and feeds weight.5-7 individuals are placed in one cage. A rooster in a flock is needed if, in the future, fertilized eggs are required to hatch chicks. In the dacha life, a rooster is needed for the beauty and the flooding announcement of a new day.
The walking area for chickens is necessary, they should be in the fresh air. A canopy is needed for the flock to shelter from the rain.
For beginners breeding chickens at home, it is important to determine the number, residence of birds.
What breeds of chickens are suitable for home breeding
Not all breeds of chickens are suitable for subsidiary farming. Therefore, to choose chickens for home breeding should be tailored to the specificity of the content, simple or pedigree. Simple less demanding on the balance of food, to the conditions of detention. There are breeds of meat or egg orientation. For example, meat broilers can be grown for a full-bodied slaughter with a weight of 3-4 kg per season. Egg breeds of chickens rush plentifully, but during the molting period they can be slaughtered, the soup will be nourishing. For personal farms, it is recommended to breed egg chickens:
- Russian White;
- White-tailed Red;
- Leggorn
We acquired daily chicks, what's next?
We need to take a big warm box. Daily chickens will knock on the wall with a spout if it is cardboard or foam, they will pick and die. At the bottom of the bottom lay a newspaper, they put a trough and a feeder. Put the incandescent lamp on a tripod on top, adjusting the height so that the floor is 30 C. At the bottom of the box the brood will interfere and illuminate on the first day, even at night, later the light day will be reduced from 5:00 to 8.Clean up a newspaper with pipettes 2 times a day. If chickens are heap-small, they are cold, the lower ones can be crushed. If you lay flat out of the light, it's hot. From the fifth day, the temperature is reduced to 26 degrees and every week another 3 degrees, so to 18. From the box, the chickens are transferred to the litter, gradually increasing the area.
By 4 months, chickens are slightly smaller than adult hens, at 5 months they begin to be born.
Chicken Content
While the chickens were growing up in a cramped, but warm room for the first two months, they built a chicken coop. House for chickens can be a decoration of the estate. The main thing is that it should be without gaps, so that there would be no draft. The floor is covered with a thick layer of sawdust or straw.
Arrange feeders with three compartments:
- dry food;
- mineral supplements;
- mash.
The feeder must be separated with bar grids so that the bird can peck rather than trample the feed. Separately installed drinking bowl. It is necessary to arrange a sand bath in the old trough. By the time the chickens are ripe, nests should be prepared - deep crates lined with dry grass with a hollow. Install them in a secluded place at the cost of a nest for 3 hens.
When the summer maintenance house can be built from plywood with a paddock, fenced mesh netting. For winter, you need a warmed, ventilated, heated room with electric lighting and a walking platform. With good care, chickens in the winter rush like in summer.
Chicken diet
Any rural inhabitant will tell you how to make chicken at home. Here is only one neighbor year-round sells an excess of eggs, and the other scolds their lazy. To recoup the cost of livestock maintenance requires good care and balanced feeding of birds from birth.
Chickens need two times more water than feed. Therefore, the water should be fresh water. The first time diaries need to drink 5% glucose solution.
Food is poured onto cardboard sheets up to seven days of age, then feeders are installed, better suspended.the first feeding of chicks consists of:
- small grains of crushed material;
- hard boiled egg;
- dry nonfat cottage cheese.
Later, the egg is no longer given, the cottage cheese contains calcium, promotes plumage. From the second day, the addition of finely chopped greens to the feed is welcomed. In winter, when there is no clover, you can germinate cereals and add greens to food.
From 3 days the mash can be cooked on yogurt, meat broth. They feed only fresh mash, an hour later the remains are thrown away, the feeder is washed and rinsed with potassium permanganate. Weak pinkish solution of potassium permanganate should be fed to chickens in the morning twice a week. Five-day chickens are already viable. They gradually increase the amount of feed, add vitamins, fish oil, from the first day you need fine gravel, eggshell, coarse sand. Up to two months of the use of cereals only crushed cereals.
Compound feed for adult chicken is required in the composition:
- corn - 40%;
- wheat bran - 8%;
- barley flour - 20%;
- sunflower oil cake - 10%;
- fish meal, bone and meat 1: 1 - 10%;
- fodder yeast - 3%;
- mineral supplements, salt - 5%.
This mixture in pure form and with mash is given 2-3 times a day. For good work of the stomach, be sure to feed chickens with dry grain, better if the films on oats and rye are smaller.
Homemade egg to taste is always different from the factory due to a diverse feed. The presence of carotene makes orange color, it is associated with a large amount of vitamin greens in the nutrition of layers.
It is impossible to overfeed a hen, it will be difficult for her to nest, her insides will become fat. Instead of eggshell, eggs will start to be covered with a thin film, pouring out, contaminating the nest. This circumstance will allow the feathered to know the taste of the product, in the future will begin to peck.
You need to feed a hen:
- mash - 65-75 g;
- dry grain mixture - 30-45 g;
- germinated cereals - 10-12 g;
- root vegetables - 20-25 g;
- fish oil, yeast, gravel, shell 1-2 g.
You can add leftovers from the table to the feed, diversify the menu. The more ingredients in the feed, the tastier the egg. The menu depends on the season. However, if you visit the base, the chickens can eat vitamins all year long - often green leaves and fruits are thrown into waste containers. Chickens especially like mangoes and oranges.
The golden age of the hen is up to 15 months, later it rushes less often, the meat grows coarse. By this time, be ready for a new brood of chickens - this is how chickens are raised in the courtyard. Usually the first eggs of pullets are brought in at the age of 110-120 days.
Disease Symptoms
It is necessary to warn, for novice breeding chickens at home, to know the main signs of disease. Despite good hygienic conditions, pigeons, stealing food, rodents can carry the disease. Sick birds can be seen immediately. They are lethargic, do not go to the trough, do not get up on their feet, there are convulsions. The sick bird must immediately be separated from the flock.
Sign of avitaminosis is considered lethargy, lack of appetite. Feed greens, irradiate with ultraviolet lamps, give fish oil and everything will work out. More terrible to cope with cannibalism of chickens. If there is a wound on the body of the bird, it will attract the attention of companions. Therefore, the light in the chicken coop should not be bright, the muffled and reddish color hides the fresh wounds.
Be alert, expect to be slander and understand the causes of this disease:
- chickens peck the fingers in the blood - it is hungry:
- peck out its head - the hierarchy is being set;
- gnawing cloaca, when it is inflamed from improper feeding;
- when the cloaca is inflamed and falls from the socks of very large eggs;
- pluck feathers - there are few minerals in the feed;
- presence of insects - perojedy, lice, ticks.
How to keep chickens and have a productive flock of a multifaceted question.
