What is the best way to feed broilers at home?
A broiler is a beef or hybrid chicken that requires special care. Experts advise how to feed broilers at home in order to get dietary meat. It is important to provide the bird with proper care from the first days of life until slaughter.
Features of growing broilers
The chick enclosure should be light-colored and the bedding should be soft and clean. Broilers do not need space. While the chickens are small, 18 pieces will fit in one square meter, there will be up to 10 adult birds on this patch. But there should be good ventilation. Gradually, as the birds mature, the corral is expanded. Broiler chickens do not need walks, they are not allowed into the yard, and the effectiveness of weight gain decreases.
Another method is the cage keeping of broilers for fattening meat at home. Then many more individuals can be placed in a small area. Slaughter of birds begins after 8 weeks. The marketable carcass by this time weighs about 2 kg, the meat is tender, dietary. After five months, keeping poultry for meat is unprofitable. Diet properties are lost, feeding does not give a quick weight gain.
If there is no opportunity to purchase chickens, several hens and a cockerel are left to lay eggs for breeding. For good survival, it is best to buy ten day old broilers.
Proper feeding of broiler chickens at home
The owner of broilers in a subsidiary farm always has a choice whether to feed the poultry with fodder from the backyard and garden or use factory-made compound feed. At poultry farms, livestock are fed only with feed supplemented with growth hormones and antibiotics to prevent diseases. Therefore, how to feed broilers at home with mixtures prepared according to the recommended diet, or compound feed, it's up to the owner. Only meat grown on green grass, dairy, grain products cooked on their own will be tastier and healthier.
There are stages in the development of a bird, for each of which a different feeding ration is selected:
- how to feed broiler chickens from birth;
- feeding ration after 20 days;
- second and subsequent months of feeding broilers.
Chicks are intensively fed and watered to gain weight quickly. The fattening period is accompanied by watering. For every kilogram of food eaten, 1.7 liters of clean warm water should be drunk. Every week, a pink solution of potassium permanganate is added to the morning portion of water.
When feeding broilers, the grass is mowed for them and finely chopped. Celandine should not be included in the collection, it is poisonous. Per day, young chicks eat a total of 1 kg of feed per flock per day. Every day the consumption increases and amounts to about 6 kg for feeding. At the same time, 7 days chickens are fed 8 times, then a week - 6 times, up to 20 days - 5 times, menstruation - in the morning and evening. However, at home, food in the form of chops and boiled vegetables can be given more often, its calorie content is lower than compound feed.
When chicks are plumage, they should include fresh cabbage leaves in their diet.They contain the element sulfur required by chickens during this period.
If you do not follow the rules of how to feed broilers at home, time and money will be wasted. Therefore, you need to follow the recommendations of specialists.
How to reduce the consumption of compound feed when feeding broilers
In the household there is always food waste, root crops, green grass and cereals, cuts from them, in pharmacies you can buy the necessary vitamins and supplements. How to feed broilers for fast growth at home?
Five recipes for raising a healthy herd:
- Use fermented cereal mixtures. To do this, add 200-300 g of pressed baker's yeast to the cereal mixture, dilute everything in 15 liters of water, heat for 6 hours to improve fermentation. Then add greens and boiled root vegetables up to 30 kg of total weight. Use fresh feed, avoiding souring. The proportions can be reduced, depending on the number of heads to feed. You can give a yeast mixture of cereals without greens, but add crushed potatoes.
- Wet mash is made from crushed grains, small cereals, crushed and soaked bread crumbs and crusts, cereals, herbs and boiled potatoes. The more varied the composition, the better it is eaten. Can broilers be fed one boiled potato? Occasionally, chicks can be pampered, making the menu varied.
- For feeding at home, you must use dairy products. The milk is poured fresh, not sour. It is also good to add reverse, cottage cheese, buttermilk, whey, but do not mix with milk. At the same time, you can give grain.
- Fresh greens can be fed not only in cut form. To prevent the bird from throwing it out of the feeder, not trampling it, you can hang brooms from fresh greens: dandelion, sow thistle, clover, alfalfa. Can spurge be given to broilers? For them, this is a delicacy. When kept in winter, seedlings of cereal crops - wheat, barley, will become green fodder.
- Compliance with cleanliness. Sour food should not be given to birds. Feeders need to be scalded frequently. The food must not be available for eating by wild birds or rodents. They can carry disease.
Feeding chicks up to one month of age
At the nursery age, laying hens and broilers chickens develop on the same feed. At this time, a mash of millet, chicken egg yolk with the addition of crushed grains of the "Artek" type is made up. The grain mixture is 60% of the total composition. The box should contain water and a temperature of about 30 degrees.
When kept in cages, the temperature must be kept higher, since the chicks cannot choose a place. A sign of coldness is when the chickens form a heap. If it's hot, chicks lie with their wings extended. The temperature gradually decreases from 34 degrees to 18.
On the third day, chopped greens, seedlings, grass flour are added to the feed, 5 g per head. From the fifth day, cottage cheese and dairy products appear on the menu. One-week-old chickens are fed grated carrots and pumpkin... Pumpkin is needed as an anthelmintic agent, but not more than 5 g per chick.
From the third to the twentieth day, when feeding broilers, it is necessary to use the Startovy compound feed, which contains balanced and easily digestible vitamins for chicks.
From 20 days onwards, it is necessary to add unmilled cereals and mineral supplements in the form of shell rock, shells, bone meal to broilers feeding. Once a week, pebbles are added to the mash to grind food in the stomach. The birds greedily pounce on food at every feeding.
At the same time, they seek out tidbits, part of the food, throwing it out of the trough. It is better to fill the trough by a third, gradually adding a portion. If the chicks were fed correctly, by the month they should weigh 500-700 grams.
Lighting should be around the clock in the first weeks, but dim. The lamp can be painted green, red. Bright lighting can cause pecking
Monthly chicks are already picky, it's time for feeding.How to feed broiler chickens in 1 month? Now 20% of cereals can be replaced with crushed potatoes. The cereal mixture consists of whole grains:
- corn, soybeans and sunflower flour - 20% each;
- barley - 10%;
- wheat - 25%;
- peas – 5%.
A prerequisite for gaining weight quickly will be using the five tips published above. It is quite possible to grow about a hundred kilograms of dietary meat in the country for the winter.
What should be given to broilers to gain more weight?
Broilers eat almost everything. They gain weight well if their diet contains boiled potatoes, chopped boiled fish, milk or reverse.
than to feed weekly broilers from panos.
I usually use the simplest remedy. For 1 liter of water I take 1 tablet of levomecitin. I give the bird until the diarrhea stops.
How to feed 1 month old broilers for weight?
How to prepare broiler feed?
Boil potatoes with grain or cereals, then grind, cool. Add pre-soaked dried bread, chopped nettle, and that's it.