How to Care for Day-Old Chicks

Do you know the reason why some of your day old chicks die in their first week, and why you keep buying drugs unnecessarily? Is because you lack the skills needed in raising and brooding day old chicks.

Is your poultry house protecting your chicks from cold, rain, wind and too much heat during brooding? Do you give your chicks enough space for their feeding, drinking and eating during brooding?

If you really want to achieve zero or no mortality during brooding your chicks you need to put in a lot of work to give out the best housing to your chicks.

Brooding can be classified into natural and artificial brooding.

It is also a place of safety where baby chicks are kept warm, fed, watered and cared for until they are able to care for themselves.

Equipment used for artificial brooding are called brooders.

•      Electricity through brooder lamps.

•      Charcoal through coal pots and brooder pots.

•      Kerosene through kerosene lamps.

•      Gas through gas brooders. These are the latest in the brooder market.

Thus, it is often difficult to maintain the body temperature properly for the first few weeks of life, as birds might be subjected to chilling and cold if you don’t properly introduce enough heating source for them.

10 things you must make sure of when brooding day old chicks

1) Check the brooder for proper temperature 24 hours prior to the arrival of chicks

2) Switch on the brooder heating source several hours before the arrival of the chicks in order to maintain required brooding temperature.

3) Always observe and notice the reaction of the chicks to the heating source in order to find out if the temperature provided is not too high or too low.

4) During brooding, one can use a combination of brooding equipment.

For example I use charcoal as a source of heat during the day and electricity during the night. It all depends on your available resources.

5) You also need to keep the brooder floor warm by putting a layer of dry wood chippings.

These also help to absorb the chicken droppings thus ensuring that the brooder is dry at all times.

Never put saw dust in a brooder for chicks. Always put wood chippings or shavings.

6) You need to add vitamins or liquid paraffin to drinking water. Vitamins for chicks are important as they help the chicks gain weight faster, overcome stress due to handling as they are transported from the hatchery to the brooder.

Liquid paraffin helps in digestion of feed by the chicks and also helps prevent constipation in chicks too.

7) Keep the brooder temperature within the range of 30 degrees to 35 degrees decreasing at 4 degrees per week for up 3 weeks.

8) After two weeks, the chicks must have begun to acquire the ability to regulate their own temperature since they have started to have feathers.

9) Also there must be increased feed intake and general activity.

10) You need to expand the brooder space as the chicks grow to avoid overcrowding which can lead to death and poor feed intake by some of the chicks due to inaccessible feeders and drinkers.

This is where we will be ending our discussion for today.

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