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Kuroiler Chicken Brooding Success Tips – 6 Essentials You Shouldn’t Ignore

2 Comments / Kienyeji Chicken, Kuroiler Chicken, Poultry Farming / By

Do you want to build a big flock of Kienyenji chickens within a short time? If so, learn the basics of proper brooding. This is the art of raising young chicks until they become less vulnerable adult chickens. Brooding can be challenging, if you lack motivation, knowledge and suitable equipment. It is a labor-intensive process that requires a lot of commitment and caution. Mistakes made during brooding can cause unexpected deaths of chicks, leading to wastage of time and money. Hence, an aspiring kienyenji chicken farmer like you should know everything about brooding even before you begin farming. In this article, you will learn the basics of the chicken brooding process.

kuroiler chicks brooding
Kienyeji chicks brooding, Kuroiler chicken.

Essentials of the brooding process

  • Litter management – Before chicks’ placement, lay a dry flooring material (like sawdust) on the floor of your brooding house. Up to four inches of dry bedding litter will be enough to provide enough warmth. The litter should be dry and clean; so, take the time to get rid of as much wetness as possible. Needless to say, you should lay fresh and dry litter when the current one becomes soiled.
  • Temperature management – Just like a new-born baby, a day-old chick needs a lot of warmth. Its feathers are not thick enough to shield its tiny body from the cold. As well as dying from the cold, chicks can succumb to extreme heat. So you have to regulate temperatures often to keep your chicks comfortable and safe. The best source of heat is the infra-red heating system, although some farmers start out with a charcoal jiko. This heat source should be placed in the middle of your brooding ring. In the first week, maintain the heat at 32 degrees Celsius. If your chicks are receiving excessive heat, they will move further away from the heat source and if it’s too cold, they will come closer to it and cluster together. When temperature is just right, your chicks will scatter all over the brooder ring.
  • Proper lighting – During their first week of life, chicks needs help locating something to eat. Thus, you should place a bright light source in the brooder ring to help your little birds locate their food and water. But, as they grow up and mature, your birds will no longer require very bright light as their eyesight will be stronger. Besides, a bright light source can encourage cannibalism among grown birds.
  • Good ventilation – As a small-scale Kienyenji chicken farmer, you should pay attention to the air quality within the brooder house and ring. This is particularly true if you intend to use a charcoal jiko as your heat source. Charcoal produces carbon monoxide when burnt and can cause gas poisoning that could kill your chicks. Perhaps a smoke emitter can help. Furthermore, you should always condition your litter to reduce the high concentration of ammonia gas in the brooding house. Otherwise, your chicken might suffer from blindness and/or ammonia burns. When constructing your brooding house, think about ventilation inlets. Don’t leave ventilation inlets that will let in excessive wind from the outside, though, as it might end up blowing your chicks along with their feed and water.
  • Make clean water and feed available – Pure water for drinking is ideal for young chicks. Plenty of it is necessary from the very day they are placed in a brooder ring. So you will require a device called a drinker. Get one that will suit your little birds’ height now and one they can grow with. As chicks will not drink as much water as adult birds, you should discard their water often to avoid contamination. Concerning the feed, chicks should eat the right kind to their fill from the first day onwards. During the first week, your concern should be less on the amount of feed that each bird eats and more on whether each one of them will access food. In short, providing adequate feeding space or a feeding chance to every chick is the most important thing to ensure when you receive your first flock. Even if every chick has an opportunity to eat, it may fail to do so if it feels too cold, hot or thirsty. Hence, a good chicken farmer should strive to maintain all the conditions that can boost the survival rate of the chicks.
  • Immunization – You can make your chicks as comfortable as possible and still lose most of them to death because you have not vaccinated them. So, following the Kienyenji chicks’ vaccination schedule is a must if you want to brood your chicks successfully.

If you follow the above-mentioned tips, you will greatly raise your chicks’ survival rate and build a profitable chicken rearing business.

kuroiler chicks brooding

Kienyenji Chickens Brooding Guide –Natural Brooding And Artificial Brooding Techniques

Leave a Comment / Kienyeji Chicken, Kuroiler Chicken, Poultry Farming / By

Kienyenji chicken brooding is easier now, thanks to modern brooding systems. Unless you don’t mind at all, you don’t have to wait until one or more of your hens turn broody. There are ways to maintain a fertile egg at a controlled temperature and humidity for around 28 days. And as soon as your chicks hatch, you can nurture them for weeks inside an artificial brooding house. Note that a brooding house is not the usual chicken coop. It is a separate structure used only when caring for young chicks–even one-day old chicks. When interested in raising and selling your kienyenji chickens, such as Kuloiler chickens, your best brooding technique should be artificial. However, you can combine natural and artificial brooding methods.

Natural brooding technique

If you intend to start a small chicken project, the natural brooding method alone will help. That means waiting until one or more of your hens stops laying eggs in order to become a mother. A broody hen is easy to identify because she will squawk all day long. As well as this, a broody hen will make a huge sacrifice just to hatch and raise her own broods. Thus, she will sit in her nesting box all day long instead of foraging with the rest of the chickens.

Moreover, a broody hen will become too protective of her nest and eggs and pluck her breast feathers to give her eggs direct heat from the body. If you notice a stubborn broody hen, it’s time to start the natural brooding process. Usually, a broody chicken will sit on eggs for 21 days and depending on her body size, she can hatch up to 20 chicks. If you are familiar with the typical birds raised in our rural areas, then you know that despite the broody hens having lice and other parasites, they hatch and raise chicks until they can forage on their own.

If you wish to brood your chicks naturally, that’s fine because there will be no extra costs. The downside is that you can only give your hen enough fertilized eggs for her body size. If you give her more eggs than she can sit on, you will end up with a few stale eggs that won’t hatch. That means hatching fewer chicks than you expected.

Artificial brooding method

This is all about producing and raising new-born chicks without a broody hen. So you will require a man-made, temperature-controlled brooder to take the place of a live broody hen. An artificial brooding technique is better than a natural brooding method when you are doing kienyenji chicken rearing as a full-blown business. Here are the pros:

  • There is no downtime because of conditions beyond your control: weather changes, broody hens to sit on eggs and so on.
  • You can hatch numerous chicks at once without requiring extra human labour or lots of broody hens.
  • You can take full charge of the brooding process, ensuring that the brooder is clean and sterilized, well-ventilated and warm enough to keep the tiny broods alive.
  • You can control the brooder temperature levels
  • Feeding can be programmed and done systematically.

If you are going to use an artificial brooding approach, then it will be important to determine whether you will personally hatch your own eggs inside an incubator or will purchase young chicks. To avoid the challenges of buying an incubator and a brooder, it would be wiser to buy chicks from a reputable kienyenji chicken farmer and brood them afterwards. Simply make an order for 1-day old chicks, 1-week old chicks and/or 2-weeks old chicks, and so on, in whatever quantity you can afford. The following essentials are a must-have:

  1. A round housing structure
  2. A heat source or a brooder
  3. Constant supply of clean, fresh air
  4. Proper lighting
  5. Clean, dry and germ-free living space
  6. Safety from fire accidents or predators
  7. Clean and disinfected feeders and drinkers

If you are trying to improvise your own brooding system, you can roll a flexible material such as plywood to create a brooder house. Then use a charcoal jiko for heat production, if you live in a rural area without electricity; one jiko can generate enough heat to warm up to 300 chicks. To create a clean, dry and germ-free living area, you can buy wood shavings. In short, you can use your own creativity to create an artificial brooder at home. Alternatively, you can buy a readily constructed brooder: electric brooder, gas brooder, an automatic heater, a hover and so on.