Without proper brooding and management of your day old chicks, you are likely to lose a significant number of these during the first three weeks. A chick loss of 1-2% is acceptable in your day old chicks. If you are losing 4-6% of your chicks during the first three weeks, you are doing very badly with brooding and chick management during these early days. If you are losing more than 10% of your chicks during the first three weeks, then this beyond incompetence and you need to carefully evaluate your day old chick management practices. So what can you do in order to ensure high level of survival rate of 99% if you are managing your day old chicks? There are several factors that you need to get right. These include the following:-
Provide Sufficient Heat
You should have prepared the brooder at least 24 hours in advance before the introduction of the day old chicks. Remember that the time period between hatching and chick placement in the brooders should be between 6 and 12 hours. If you take any longer, you will be exposing your chicks to various stresses which increases the rate of mortality.
Ensure that you have given the chicks the right amount of heat in order to keep them warm both during the day and at night. When brooding, avoid changing the brooder temperature abruptly as time passes. Instead, you need to undertake a gradual temperature step down by lowering temperatures by at least 2 degrees celcius on a gradual basis as specified in our poultry farming manuals or by your Philippines poultry consultant.
When brooding in Philippines conditions, here are the ideal brooding temperatures that you should adopt:-
Table
Use the behavior of the day old chicks in order to determine whether you have achieved the right brooding temperatures for the Philippines conditions. For example, when temperatures are too hot, the chicks begin to pant, spread out their wings and move away from the heat source. They also eat less and remain mostly inactive. They will drink more water which result in watery stools. In case the temperatures are too low, the chicks will move close to the heat sources. Check out our Philippines Poultry Farming Manual for diagrams and photos of chick behavior due to higher temperatures.
Have Adequate Lighting for the Chicks
The brooder should be well lit in order to enable the chicks to eat more and find their food easily. It is also advisable to provide them with sufficient ventilation so that they can breathe easily and get rid of carbon dioxide and excess moisture from the poultry house. Good ventilation does not mean draughty. Poor ventilation is likely to lead to weaknesses and respiratory diseases.
Provide Lots of Space and Prevent Overcrowding
In our Philippines poultry farming manuals, you will find information on the right stock density to use along with the right house dimensions and plans based on the number of hens that you plan to rear. We also offer information on the amount of space which the birds need at various stages of development.
Select Healthy Chicks
There are qualities that you should look out for when buying chicks in order to ensure you have only the healthiest of chicks. For example, they should be alert, active, and have dry fluffy feathers.
Offer Correct Feeding
We offer a comprehensive guide on how much to feed at various ages including the density of feeders and drinkers in the poultry house. Formulated feeds are perfect during the first few weeks as they contain required levels of various nutrient requirements and even contain antibiotics such as coccidiostats. Never allow feeding troughs to be empty for more than two hours. Ensure there is constant supply of clean and fresh drinking water throughout the day.
Proper sanitation
We cover the various sanitation and clean management practices that you should adopt under our biosecurity measures in our Philippines poultry farming manual.