Egg Chickens For The Summer - From Chickens To Layers. Maintenance, Nutrition, Health. Organization Of A Chicken Coop. Photo

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Egg Chickens For The Summer - From Chickens To Layers. Maintenance, Nutrition, Health. Organization Of A Chicken Coop. Photo
Egg Chickens For The Summer - From Chickens To Layers. Maintenance, Nutrition, Health. Organization Of A Chicken Coop. Photo

Video: Egg Chickens For The Summer - From Chickens To Layers. Maintenance, Nutrition, Health. Organization Of A Chicken Coop. Photo

Video: Egg Chickens For The Summer - From Chickens To Layers. Maintenance, Nutrition, Health. Organization Of A Chicken Coop. Photo
Video: 5 Things To Feed Your Chickens So They Lay Eggs All Year 2024, March
Anonim

I am an urban person, but I really love all kinds of animals. We have a summer cottage in the village - a place not only for rest and work in the beds, but also the opportunity to keep pets, for example, a bird, in the summer. So, at one time we kept broiler chickens at the dacha, which I talked about in my article "How to grow a broiler of 3-4 kg from a chicken in two months?" I have experience in keeping and egg chickens. In this article I will tell you about how to keep this poultry with minimal financial investment and physical effort.

Egg chickens for the summer - from chickens to layers
Egg chickens for the summer - from chickens to layers

Content:

  • Keeping chickens in an apartment
  • Chick feeding
  • Chick health
  • Organization of a chicken coop in the country
  • Walking egg chickens
  • Chickens and eggs

Keeping chickens in an apartment

The process of raising our first egg hens from chickens began in a city apartment. Naturally, there is not much space, so it was decided to buy only 5 day old chickens.

When choosing chickens, they used the folk method of determining their sex. Carefully took each chicken by the legs, turned it upside down. The one who lifts his head must be a cock. If the chicken continues to hang with its head down, it is more likely to be a future chicken. Thus, we managed to guess the sex of the chicks with an accuracy of 75%. Subsequently, out of five pets, we had three chickens and two cockerels.

We bought this beast in March. They fenced off a part of the kitchen for them, which covered the battery under the windowsill, the space under the next standing table. Under it we had a cardboard box with holes in which our pets spent most of their time. From above, we covered this container with gauze. When it got dark, they turned on the light so that it burned in the chickens for the first 3 days almost around the clock, then until one in the morning.

They put them in a box an artificial hen made from a three-liter can, which was sheathed with rags of an old woolen blanket. In this case, it is important to deprive the chickens of the opportunity to swallow the open threads, mistaking them for worms. It is necessary either to process the edges of such patches, or take a warm fabric that does not "wrinkle". It can be fleece or drape, and it is most economical to use not a new canvas, but the material of an old thing. A worn jacket or an old drape coat will do.

You need to pour hot water into the jar and, as it cools, constantly change it to a new one. I talked about this in more detail in my article on broilers.

In March and until mid-April, we had another heating method for the little ones. Since the batteries are still being heated at this time of the year, but they are no longer scalding hot, the chickens happily housed between the radiator sections. But they did this only at the beginning of their development, when they grew up a little, they no longer fit in there. On one side of the battery, a long horizontal pipe runs at the bottom. Warm water also flows through it. The grown-up chickens sat here as on a roost, and warmed their paws and bellies.

Little Chicks Need Warmth, Light, and Whole Food
Little Chicks Need Warmth, Light, and Whole Food

Chick feeding

Little chickens need warmth, light and wholesome food. The first three days after the purchase, we fed them a hard-boiled egg (finely chopped with a knife), then we began to mix a little well-boiled millet, a little cottage cheese into the egg.

These birds should always have fresh water. To prevent them from trampling it, we turned over a liter jar of water on a shallow plate. Water flowed out, the chickens could quench their thirst at any time.

From the age of three days they began to introduce a little chopped green onions into their diet. In April, young nettles were collected, washed, chopped and added to this mash.

Chickens were fed up to 30 days of age every 3 hours - from 7 am to 10 pm. From one month of age - 4 times a day. When they moved to the dacha and got the opportunity to walk, they fed them 3 times a day, plus - sometimes they provided them with snacks from the leftovers from their table.

Chick health

Chicks should be checked periodically to make sure everyone is healthy. Even after feeding, we carefully touched their goiter, making sure that they were full. But you need to very carefully take the chickens, since these hustlers always strive to jump out of their hands. If they fall and hit, it could result in serious injury.

If some chick is “weak,” as my grandmother used to say, it can be treated as follows. Dilute a small amount of vodka in a one-to-one ratio with boiled water and pour a drop of this "drug" into the sick person's beak from a pipette.

In the comments to the already mentioned article on broilers, the reader of Botanichka Natalia recommends boiling nettle with boiling water and soldering cold chickens with a warm solution. The result, she says, is excellent. But it is better to dry the nettle in advance in order to be able to make such a medicine in early spring. This dried weed will also make an excellent vitamin supplement for chickens at this time of year. Dry nettles also need to be steamed, squeezed and added to the mash.

Regular processed sticks or cuttings from garden tools are suitable for roosting
Regular processed sticks or cuttings from garden tools are suitable for roosting

Organization of a chicken coop in the country

At the end of April, our poultry stock, approximately 6 weeks old, was taken to the village. Later we bought two more young hens so that our flock consisted of five hens. One rooster was presented to the neighbors, because no one raised a hand to him. So we have a livestock of one rooster and five hens.

Our village house already had a yard with a chicken coop, so there was no need to organize housing for young chickens. But you can also use an ordinary barn in which there are no cracks to keep egg chickens in the summer. It is important that predatory animals, for example, a weasel, cannot enter here. The hens also need a roost. For this, regular processed sticks or cuttings from garden tools are suitable.

I put a film on the floor in the chicken coop under the perches so that when the birds slept, their waste would fall on this film. When I cleaned the chicken coop, I shovel bird droppings from this film into a bucket with a shovel. You can dry this organic fertilizer, then use it in your garden as needed.

In order for the chickens to have somewhere to lay their eggs, you need to make boxes of plywood or take small baskets, place them at a height of 1 m. The first time after arrival, we put a couple of eggs in such boxes, where they then laid their eggs.

The food of these pets consisted mainly of bread soaked in water, boiled potatoes, chopped nettle, chopped eggshells, and dry grain.

We also had a field with oats behind the fence. A path to the lake runs right through it. On the way back, we collected these spikelets, since they were still suppressed by pedestrians. Chickens pecked with pleasure this treat too. We also naturally fed them the leftovers from our table.

In order for the chickens to have where to lay their eggs, you need to make boxes of plywood or take small baskets, place them at a height of 1 m
In order for the chickens to have where to lay their eggs, you need to make boxes of plywood or take small baskets, place them at a height of 1 m

Walking egg chickens

Until the beds were sown in the garden, we let our pets go for a walk here. They dug their food out of the ground - bugs and worms.

After planting the beds, we identified a specific walking area for them - we fenced off the area near the fence with a netting net. If possible, it is necessary to pour sand in the paddock, so that in dry weather poultry can take "dry baths" here. We didn't have sand, so the hens and the rooster were happy to take “dust baths”, wallowing in the upper layer of dry earth next to the red currant bushes in the sun.

Like all the village chickens, our chickens periodically went out into the street, all that remained was to make sure that they did not go far. But chickens are smart birds, they know where their home is. Therefore, I had to call them only sometimes. Our chickens and rooster responded very well to du-du-du-du. They ran to this call like tame.

Chickens and eggs

Our chickens, bought in March by chickens, began to rush at the end of July. Depending on the breed of egg chickens, they begin to lay at the age of 4.5-5.5 months. Eggs raised on free bread chickens cannot be compared with store-bought ones. Our hens had bright orange yolks, sometimes they even laid two-yolk eggs.

An excellent forage aid for them was grass, all sorts of bugs, worms, which these birds hunted for themselves. Grass added to the diet makes the yolks brighter.

Our chickens rushed almost every day. Five of these hens are quite enough for a family of 3 - 4 people. We also sometimes shared eggs with a neighbor who helped us with seedlings and valuable advice.

In early autumn, I noticed that the chickens began to lay less. At first I thought it was because of the coming cold weather. But then my daughter showed me where our hens go to "relieve themselves." It turns out that they found themselves a secluded place behind the barn and began to rush there, apparently, they wanted to breed. But it was already September, and in November we were leaving for the city, there was no time for chickens.

Therefore, it is important to watch that the chickens rush in one place reserved for this. And if suddenly there are fewer eggs, you need to track where they go to lay their eggs.

An excellent forage aid for chickens is grass, all kinds of worm bugs that these birds hunt for themselves
An excellent forage aid for chickens is grass, all kinds of worm bugs that these birds hunt for themselves

Dear Readers! If you have the opportunity and desire to have several egg chickens for the summer in the country, do not worry - this is not such a troublesome business! With minimal material and physical costs, you can consume free natural chicken eggs almost all summer and autumn. And if you buy not chickens, but young chickens, then the bird will cost you more, but you will save yourself the trouble of keeping the chickens.

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