subject: The Dos And The Don'ts Of Raising Chickens [print this page] If you have a few chickens around to be able to have fresh eggs every single day, then raising chickens isn't a big deal for you. But if you're considering raising hundreds, even thousands of chickens to supply the market with fresh chicken and eggs, then what you do not know about chicken farming could certainly hurt both you and your budding enterprise. Unlike the chickens in cartoons of old, nests don't arrive complete with little tubes in which the eggs roll down to a waiting basket, prepared for you to grab and cart away. Proper handling and maintaining of both your chickens and their eggs can make all the difference, not only in the number of eggs which are produced, but also the numbers of chicks that successfully hatch twenty-one days after they're laid.
Raising chickens means creating chicken houses correctly, maintaining clean and sterile conditions for producing uniform sized eggs, and understanding what to do once you gather and send the fertilized eggs into the incubator. Sure, you may allow the chickens do it, but in today's fast-paced, competitive world, you need to be ahead of the game, and take the proper steps to get maximum effectiveness in your egg and chick production.
Everyone knows that to do that, you need happy, healthy chickens, with optimum hatching conditions. There's much more to hatching an egg than just putting it into an incubator and leaving it until it hatches. There is likewise much more to maintaining your chicken hatchery and chicken houses than simply feeding the birds. Precautions should be taken for the safety of the chicks and also the hens and roosters. Chicken to rooster ratios must be precisely right.
You also need to understand what to do and how to care for your chicks once they're born. For instance, chicks need to be introduced to a perch once they get to 6 weeks of age. Chicken houses should be kept lockedall the time and conditions, and personnel should be strictly monitored. Examining your chickens for avian diseases, and understanding the procedures to assist prevent them, is also extremely important.
After that, if bad conditions occur, and you notice that you have a few sick birds, you have to realize what to do to prevent further infestation. The last thing you require is for influenza to spread to all the rest of your chickens. Too little action, too late could bring about huge losses, and no business can stand up to that. Also, in some instances, as in the avian flu, the potential for spreading to humans can also be fairly dangerous.
