How To Create Conditions And Maintain A Mini Chicken Farm In The Country (part 2)

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Read the first part of the article

Chicken care

The main conditions for obtaining high productivity of chickens:

• cleanliness and dryness of the premises;
• complete absence of drafts in them;
• maintaining the optimum temperature (in summer + 16 … + 18 ° С, in winter - not lower than + 5 ° С);
• dry and clean litter;
• sufficient lighting of the chicken coop;
• providing poultry with fresh water;
• provision of well-balanced feed.

Every breeder should know that with good, calm handling, the bird becomes tame and easy to catch and inspect. When fishing, you should not grab the tail, but try to take it by the wing. This is most conveniently done when dispensing feed.

In winter, daylight hours are of great importance for chickens. In the dark, the bird sees poorly, eats little, sleeps a lot. Therefore, with a short daylight hours, egg production usually decreases. The most optimal daylight hours are 12-14 hours. Artificial lighting of the poultry house allows you to extend the "working" day of the bird. At the same time, feed consumption increases, but egg production increases.

For an adult, well-fed bird in the fall and winter, the electric light in the chicken coop is turned on at 6 a.m. and turned off with the onset of daylight. In the evening, the lights are turned on at dusk and turned off at 19-20 hours. Turn off the light gradually, giving the bird the opportunity to climb to the roost in time.

With additional lighting, it is necessary to provide chickens with complete feed and clean water. Additional lighting for the house is ended when natural daylight hours reach 13 hours.

In suburban conditions, chickens are kept on the floor using removable and non-removable (deep) bedding. It is more rational to keep birds on a deep (warm) bedding. Such a bedding 25-30 centimeters thick is made of straw cutting, fine-fiber peat, small shavings …

The deep litter absorbs moisture and harmful gases from the manure well, which significantly improves the health of the house. In winter, it insulates the house well due to the heat released during the decomposition of the litter material. In deep litter the temperature reaches + 22 … + 24 ° С. Such litter is usually placed in the house in autumn, in dry and warm weather. First, the floor is disinfected. To do this, sprinkle the floor with a thin layer of quicklime (fluff) at the rate of 0.5 kilograms per 1 m² and dry well.

During operation, the litter is periodically turned over and its top layer is stirred to prevent the formation of a litter crust and lumps. At the same time, make sure that the litter is not wet and does not get wet near the drinkers, as this contributes to the occurrence of colds. In the chicken coop, it is advisable to exclude droppings from entering the litter, which will protect it from dampness. First of all, it depends on the quality of the pallet (box).

The poultry house must be cleaned and ventilated daily: open the window, doors. But in no case create drafts.

Feeding chickens is essential for productivity. You can feed both dry compound feed, and use combined feeding, in which cheaper feed is used to partially replace concentrates.

Such feeds include: earthworms (earthworms), mollusks, May beetles and their larvae (beetles), all kinds of caterpillars, seeds of herbs and woody plants, grass flour, hay dust, spruce and pine needles, rowan berries, hawthorn, vegetable waste and fruit, any silage.

For the winter, you can prepare brooms necessarily with leaves of linden, acacia, birch, willow and other plants, as well as nettles. Wet mash (ground barley, wheat, oats or millet) are good food in winter. A fresh mash is prepared for each feeding. She is fed in the morning and afternoon. At night, the chickens are given grain.

To make the birds move more in the hen house, you need to hang bunches of clover or alfalfa, corn cobs and cabbage heads at such a height that the birds jump up, pecking them. And yet, despite such "gymnastics", to maintain good health, chickens need a walk. At least very tiny. While walking, birds find plant and animal food, which allows not only to diversify feed, but also to save them.

The walk is fenced with a metal mesh stretched over the racks. Although it is quite possible to build a reliable fence from shingles, wooden slats, brushwood, and even from a fishing net. I happened to see a fence made of defective parts of a chain-link mesh. Height of fencing for chickens is 1.8-2 meters.

A lot of troubles and even troubles are caused by chickens flying over the walking fence to neighboring areas, especially if there are flower beds and berry gardens on them. In such cases, a fence up to three meters high is often erected, which requires not only significant financial costs, but also constant maintenance. To avoid this, the ends of the feathers of one wing (to the phalanx) are trimmed to the chickens. But such an operation should be carried out with extreme caution. After such a procedure, the bird is not able to fly over even a low fence.

Ideally, paddocks should be sown with perennial grasses (clover, alfalfa, and others). To do this, it should be divided into two parts and used in turn. Chickens quickly destroy seedlings of greenery, pecking out everything, including the roots. To prevent this, it is necessary to install a protective grid over green crops at a height of 10 centimeters.

The bird, pecking on the growing greens, does not damage the roots. To prevent the mesh from bending, several slats are attached to it. If the greens are regularly and abundantly watered with water, then it will quickly recover. However, we must admit that sowing a walk, arranging a grid over it is a very troublesome and costly business. Therefore, it is unlikely that it will pay off in a small country house. Therefore, I made a reservation: this is the ideal case.

Walking chickens kill up to 500 insect pests per day. Based on this, it is useful to release birds in the summer to orchards, and in the spring, when digging the beds, and in the fall, after harvesting, to the garden.

When walking, it is advisable to plant trees or shrubs and make a canopy from rain and sun. In winter, chickens can be released for walking, cleared of snow and covered with a layer of straw, spruce branches. At an outside temperature of -10 ° C, as well as in strong winds, the bird is not allowed to walk. And you don't need to force her out for a walk.

It would also be nice to make an ash bath. It is necessary to combat skin parasites that die from dust when bathing a bird. Such a measure is especially effective against feather lice. These wingless insects feed on scattered skin particles, feathers and down. They are very disturbing to chickens, causing severe itching. As a result, the birds do not feed, they lose weight, which leads to a decrease in egg production.

Any suitable container will do for an ash bath, for example, a wooden box measuring 1.2x0.7 meters and 20 centimeters high. The bath is filled with fine sand or dry clay mixed in equal parts with wood ash.

When planning to engage in breeding chickens, or already engaged in it, in no case should we overlook such an important factor as disease prevention. This requires a high sanitary culture, proper feeding and keeping of birds. Chickens can be sick with non-communicable and contagious diseases.

Since infectious diseases such as pseudo-plague, pasteurellosis (bird cholera), helminthiasis require, as a rule, the intervention of a veterinarian, I will only touch on some non-infectious diseases.

Non-infectious diseases arise, first of all, from the inability of the poultry farmer to create optimal conditions for feeding and maintenance - if the deadlines and diet are not observed, when placed in a damp, dirty, stuffy room, if the lighting regime is violated, with the already mentioned overcompaction.

Birds are demanding to comply with the feed distribution regime. If the usual feeding schedule is not followed, egg production begins to decrease, the normal tone of the muscles of the skeleton and internal organs (atony) is lost. With a lack of vitamins, vitamin deficiency occurs: first, the chicken loses its appetite, then the egg production decreases, a sure sign of this phenomenon is the thinning of the egg shell.

Such feeds as greens, dry leaves of nettle, clover, alfalfa, carrots, yeast, sprouted grains contain vitamins A and B. They should be added to the feed as much as possible. To replenish vitamin D, birds are given fish oil.

During laying, a lot of minerals and, above all, calcium, are consumed in the body of the laying hen. Therefore, chickens should be fed with crushed shells, bone meal, chalk. To improve the grinding of food in the gizzard, gravel should be given to the bird.

Chickens consume almost 2.5 times more air oxygen per 1 kilogram of weight than large animals, and therefore do not feel well in a stuffy, dusty room. It's good when the chicken coop is a little cool and dry; bad when the body is damp. Birds tolerate heat (over + 30 ° C) as badly as severe cold.

Necessary remark

I want to draw the attention of summer residents-poultry farmers to a very important (albeit little-known fact) - chicken hierarchy. She has existed among chickens for a long time, exists and will exist forever. Its essence is as follows … Among the birds there will always be the strongest, most aggressive individuals who dominate the flock (group). They occupy the best places at the feeders, the most convenient places on the perch. In a word, such birds are in an extremely privileged position.

A moment should be noted here … When an adult hen falls into a group from the outside (that is, she did not grow up in it since chicken age), she is forever doomed to be an outcast. She will be offended by all birds of this group. Sometimes such a poor fellow is protected by a rooster, but by no means everyone and not always.

Speaking of the rooster … If you are not going to acquire your own chickens, then you do not need a rooster at all. He becomes just a parasite and is only suitable for decorating the courtyard, and even, perhaps, for singing: "Ku-ka-re-ku". And that's all.

It does happen (though rarely) that an outcast hen acquires chickens. Then her status rises markedly. Apparently, this is due to the fact that she needs to take care of the offspring, and therefore the rest of the chicken brethren, realizing this, at least to some extent "respects" her.

Therefore, I strongly advise: before you introduce an adult chicken into the group from the outside, think about what it will be like for her to remain a stranger in her yard all her life? I know of cases when, in order to "equalize" all the birds in a group, their plumage was smeared with the same paint or sprayed with deodorants. However, I don’t remember a single case when this measure would have helped.

Of course, no one has canceled the well-known proverb from the earliest times: "A chicken is not a bird." But, firstly, chicken is still a bird, and secondly, it is very useful. Get chickens and see for yourself.

Ivan Zaitsev

Photo by Olga Rubtsova