How to feed broilers at home
Many farmers are concerned about how to feed broilers. Proper nutrition of chickens is a guarantee of the quality of eggs, good type of meat and healthy future offspring. This is especially a fundamental question for broiler chickens: there are unspoken rules on how to water broiler chickens, what feed to choose if the chickens are two-week-old or three-week old. A healthy diet provides them with fast weight gain, good meat quality and a delicate taste. Carefully selected nutrition will also ensure a solid quality of eggs if the breeder wants to have a whole livestock of broiler chickens.
Feeding broilers at home
The main goal in growing broiler chickens is slaughter for meat, since this type of chickens quickly gains weight up to 5.5 kg. Raising a chicken to a broiler layer is only worth raising if you want additional, healthy offspring.
A stable feeding regime should be maintained, taking into account the characteristics of the breed.
Bird menu at home
The ration for feeding at home should be selected taking into account the age of the bird. How to choose food that would provide chickens with the whole range of necessary micronutrients? Chicken needs protein and fat. Not only does chicken, fish, and dairy products such as whey provide enough protein.
You can enrich the chicken's body with protein by feeding it the most harmful beetles from the garden: Colorado, May. After 3 days from the moment of birth, you can feed the main food and grass, as it will be good for birds vitamin supplement... The need for vitamins in small chickens arises from birth, as the young body grows. Any food should be given strictly on time. For example, if lunch is every day at 3 pm, you need to feed only during this period of time, otherwise the chickens will get lost and not know when to wait for food and when not.
Self-catering for chickens
Broilers can be fed with self-prepared food. It is advisable to include boiled, grated vegetables, various root vegetables and potatoes in the diet. Mash every day with barley and wheat. They are valuable because they include a lot of exactly those vitamins and minerals that are needed for the development of the chicken and improve its health. Having enriched the chicken menu with vegetables, you can do without even specialized feed. In nature, chickens are laid down by the day that any of them, even a broiler chicken, will be greedy for flour made from leguminous herbs: from peas, nettles, clover, alfalfa or dandelions.
The calculation can be made specifically for these herbs, since the recipe is simple. Nevertheless, there should not be more than 5 g of grass meal per chick per day: due to the presence of fiber, it is poorly absorbed.
It is advisable to calculate feeding by day.If one type of food and herbs is given on one day, then on the other you need to alternate food. At home, after drawing up the optimal diet, the birds will get used to it and over time, resistance will develop to the products. Birds will also appreciate the presence of fruit in their diet.
Varieties of feed
Broiler feed is very important. Many farmers use feed such as purina, elite, west or best, grover, kalinka, pk-5, pk-6. You can also start feeding, especially daytime chicks from the first days of life until the age of 14 days. Already 3-week-old chickens are fed with more adult feed and are gradually transferred to it. Pellets are good for fattening. When feeding broilers at home, all responsibility falls on the farmer, and the feeding and health of the livestock depends on how competently he makes up the diet. The composition and table of each balanced feed is indicated on the label.
In order to accurately determine the dosage and calculate the consumption, you need to consult a veterinarian, in this case, the content is greatly simplified. The consumption of such feed before slaughter will be much less than self-preparation. Nowadays, instead of self-selected food, specialized feeds are used, which also provide birds with the necessary minerals, trace elements and vitamins. The main thing is to take into account the type of feed. From this, the keeping of birds is noticeably simplified. Feeding broilers at home should be done according to all the rules.
What feed to choose for broiler birds
For each feed there is a certain scheme or table, so it is quite simple to decide what to feed broilers at home: you just have to study the instructions.
Whichever method of feeding is chosen, it is necessary to give food at home strictly according to the dosage. Transfer to homemade should be gradually, strictly by the day. Starter feed is used to feed both newly hatched and two week old chicks, as it is a storehouse of protein for birds. They can be fed to chickens from the very first days of life, since protein for them is the main and most important micronutrient that they really need right now.
Complementary feed, as the name suggests, is used to increase the muscle mass of the chicken. Also, this feed "accelerates" weight gain... According to research, this feed is an ideal solution for the rapid physiological maturation of birds, especially broilers.
Finishing feed is used for those birds from which it is planned to obtain strong healthy offspring. Most of the finishing feed is conventional mash feed. They do not contain so much protein, but they are saturated with vitamins and minerals necessary for adult chickens - such food will increase the life of the bird and strengthen its health.
Broiler feeds that can be prepared on their own will slightly extend the growing time of broilers, but such feeds can be much cheaper and more profitable than purchased ones. Nevertheless, ready-made feed from the right category is the right solution for fast growing broilers, you can add the necessary ingredients and elements to it from above.
Diet of weekly broiler chickens
At home, you need to know the feeding ration of broiler chickens. The sooner the chick is provided with quality nutrition, the better. It is advisable to take the dosage into account, according to age and characteristics.
Many farmers want to know if it is possible to feed grown-up and novice broilers with crushed, buckwheat, apples? It's too early to give an apple to weekly chickens. If an adult chicken eats dry food well, then apples can be fed to it, but not more often than a couple of times a week. If you give apples and other fruits without measure, it will lead to gastrointestinal upset.
Buckwheat is not given to broilers. Nutrition for the first 10 days should be provided with a pipette.If one of the newborn chicks is not able to peck food, they should be fed separately with a pipette filled with a mixture of yolk and cream. These first 10 days in a chick's life should be the most nutritionally intensive, as a newly hatched broiler chick should eat every 2 hours a day, which is about 7-8 full pipettes. Chicks should never be left without food for more than 6 hours.
For rapid growth in the future, pure protein is fed to chickens: milk, cottage cheese, boiled eggs. With the onset of the fifth day of life, you can safely add crushed shells to the eggs to obtain minerals for the chicks.
In the first 10 days of life, weak chicks are eliminated - all those who have survived to this moment can be considered winners. But the diet for the winners must also be appropriate: from this moment on, the chicks need at least 15 g of feed daily. For this reason, you must always monitor the feeder: it must always be full. By day 10, strong chicks should feed on their own. compound feed... Gradually, their diet can be filled with greens. Also, 10-day-old birds can already be given carrots: young animals need no more than 5 g per day.
Feeding rules for three-week-old broiler chickens
20 days is the date when feeding of broiler chickens can be safely switched from starter feed to fattening feed. It is important not to miss this moment. The nutrition of the chicks should be diversified: they gradually begin to gain weight. First of all, the diet should be replenished with protein, which is now the most important for birds. For this purpose, cereals cooked in meat broth, boiled fish, and generally animal products are well suited.
When the chicks are used to this menu, you can add yeast. Some young poultry farmers are afraid to do this at such an early age, believing that it is better to wait up to a month. This is mistake. Naturally, yeast should not be more than 2 g per chicken. For general health and good condition, as well as intestinal prevention, it is useful to give water to chickens with diluted potassium permanganate.
After a while, you can also give boiled potatoes mixed with cereals. You cannot feed birds with plain raw water: decoctions of chamomile or rose hips will be much more useful for the digestion of small chicks. It is worth considering that broiler chickens drink a lot, and each of them needs up to 40 g of liquid per day so that they do not develop dehydration.
Meals at the age of one month
At a respectable age of up to 50 days, chickens should already be fed with dry grain, corn. Few farmers at this age prepare feed with their own hands. Broiler chickens are a rather rare case, because they are allowed to mix "assorted" from different grains. You can give mash every day with millet, oats. For the taste of meat and a set of fat, many people give corn. Assorted from different grains, you can do the following: mix peas with crushed wheat, barley. The approximate and best composition of such a "cocktail" is at least 2 types of cereals, proteins and mineral supplements or mineral-containing premixes.
Feed intake rates may vary. Wet mash at a clearly set time will not interfere either. It is up to the breeder to decide in what proportions and in what quantity to mix grain feed. Also at this age, yeast is an obligatory element of feeding. Every chick, at least a little, needs to eat yeast a day for effective growth.
It is recommended to use and fish fat as a source of vitamins. But yeast should always be a must on broiler menus. With properly selected nutrition and stable feeding, broiler chicks can gain up to 4 kg of weight by 2.5 months. Some breeders prefer to steam their food. Porridge steamed on fish and meat waste, sprouted grain, grass, etc. can almost completely replace compound feed, but not all farmers come to this method of feeding.Subject to these simple rules, even a small subsidiary farm can bring a good profit to the farmer.
The period of active growth of broiler birds
After 30 days of life, when fattening broilers, it is necessary to provide active replenishment of the diet with vitamins and protein foods. In warm seasons, the birds are already supplied with vitamins while walking and feeding is simplified, but in order to preserve this source in winter, it is worth harvesting dried greens "wreaths" from the summer.
Greens, even in dried form, retain all the beneficial properties. It is also worth adding sources of minerals to the diet: grated shells, shells or chalk. It is not recommended to give sand: it will have a bad effect on the work of digestion.
For better functioning of the digestive system of chickens, it is worth adding vitamin D to the diet, in addition to it, you can also use specialized feed. Broiler chickens need to be fed ad libitum and often, still 7-8 times a day as chicks.
What should not be fed to broilers
It is difficult to feed broiler birds correctly with your own hands without answering the question of whether it is possible to feed domestic broilers with this or that product. There is a list of what to feed small broiler chickens with. It includes:
- Any products from the table. Human food contains many substances and impurities harmful to birds. Broilers should avoid eating salty, sweet or seasoned food even in minimal quantities.
- Pure boiled potatoes and potato boiling water. It can't even be used as a base for mash. Potatoes can only be given with cereals.
- Fine sand: it clogs the goiter.
- Bread, baked goods, any additives.
- Peel from citrus and melons.
- Sausages and sausages.
- New milk.
- Cheese, cocoa, chocolate and jam.
- Alcohol-containing foods and fermented berries or fruits.
- Pure butter and vegetable oil.
If there are no products for a balanced diet, they should not be replaced with foods prohibited for feeding. In this case, it is better to find a suitable product, but the broilers will be healthy and active, and the farmer will receive the highest quality meat. Subject to the rules of feeding and diet, birds will strengthen their immunity and will be less prone to common diseases.