Best Brooding Technique

When it comes to broilers having the right brooder is key. Brooder is simply a room where you will place your broilers during the first few weeks or days. This room normally gives an easy time to the farmer when trying to control the temperature levels in the poultry house. It is worth pointing out that temperature or rather heat is essential for young birds to grow. The good thing about providing sufficient heat is that it gives the chicks an ideal room temperature to survive. Your brooder should act like the mother chicken where they find warmth when they try to sleep.  This critique takes you through the best ways to have your brooder in place for your broilers and layers.

Get to know about temperature levels

Depending on the age of the chicks, temperature levels differ inside the brooder. Below are recommended temperature levels that you should try to maintain inside the brooder:

Week	Temperature at chick level	Temp inside the house
1	30-35	30-32
2	30-32	27-29
3	28-29	24-26
4	26-27	21-23

From the above table, it is evident that temperature inside the brooder decreases as days go by. This makes sense since the chicks have wings to keep themselves warm. Probably you are wondering how you would be measuring temperature inside the brooder house. There are certain specific thermometers meant for poultry production. You have to ask any poultry store if they have any. Please ensure that you settle for a thermometer that suits your budget. Temperature at the chick level refers to the temperature on the wood shavings where the chicks lie.

Avoid corners in your brooder

A big mistake that farmers normally do is having corners inside their poultry houses. These corners can be considered as killing zones for either broilers or layers. Avoid corners at all cost as this will reduce the number of deaths you will be facing for your current flock. To do this, you can simply use ply-wood/ soft wood. To save on the wood, you can opt to cut them horizontally into two halves. These will take care of the corners that you have in your poultry house.

Ensure you use the right type of wood shavings 

Wood shavings is not a matter to be neglected. There are some poultry farmers who are normally mislead into buying the wrong type of wood shavings. The best wood shavings are those from a shaving machine. Do not settle for those that are from manual shaving machines. These are too bulky and will not provide a comfortable environment for your chicken.

Lighting up your brooder

Lighting your brooder is as important as keeping it warm. Provision of light ensures that your flock can feed day and night. This gives you an advantage of selling them early enough. Consequently, you will be getting your profits within the shortest time possible.

Bringing in new flock to the brooder

NOTE, before bringing a new flock to the brooder it is advisable to spray it using disinfectant. Of course this should be done after thorough cleaning has been done on the room. 

To sum up, simply try to be a unique poultry farmer worth talking about out there. Follow the above brooding tips to ensure that you rear top quality poultry products.