COMPETENCY BASED LEARNING MATERIAL

Sector:
AGRICULTURE AND FISHERY SECTOR
Qualifications:
ANIMAL PRODUCTION (POULTRY CHICKEN NC II

Unit of Competency:
MAINTAIN POULTRY HOUSE

Module Title:
MAINTAINING POULTRY HOUSE
Institution:
Technical Education and Skills Development Authority
TACLOBAN CENTRAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNICAL STUDIES INC.
Tacloban City, LEYTE

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Introduction:
Poultry production is the process of raising chickens, ducks,
turkeys, and other birds for meat or eggs. It involves several stages from
hatch to peak performance, harvesting, and processing. Poultry farming can
be done on a small or large scale, and it is a major source of animal
protein. Poultry production has a competitive advantage due to abundant
feed resources, efficient feed conversion, and modern genetics. Poultry
production can also be sustainable and carbon neutral, depending on how
birds and feed are raised.

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 INFORMATION SHEET 2.1: Poultry housing and facilities are cleaned
and disinfected in regular basis.
Cleaning and Disinfection
To achieve the genetic potential of our broilers, it is important to provide
them with everything they require, including the correct temperature and
ventilation conditions along with a good feed and water management program.
The first step to reach the desired performance is to provide the flock with a
clean environment where the risk of flock infection at placement is minimal.
Reducing the risk of infection requires a clear and complete cleaning and
disinfection program.
The cleaning and disinfection program should be rigorous and consistent
between every flock. It is important to note that even if the previous flock had no
outward signs of infection or if there were no sanitary issues in the house, that
does not necessarily mean pathogens were not present. Thorough cleaning must
be done regardless of an outgoing flock’s status. Chicks are more susceptible to
disease than adults, and if cleaning is done poorly, any pathogens present
during placement could create significant risks to the flock.

Personnel are a leading cause of contaminating a clean house. Footbaths and

clean boots must be available at the entrance to every house.
The written cleaning procedure must be simple and easy for all personnel to
understand. Although each operation is unique, the cleaning and sanitizing
steps will be the same and must be performed correctly and thoroughly.
Additionally, all personnel using chemicals for cleaning and disinfection
must use personal protective equipment (PPE) including masks, gloves,
goggles, and overalls according to the chemicals safety guidelines. This will
ensure human welfare and that the procedure is completed correctly.
After the flock has left the farm, apply an insecticide to the litter. Allow the
insecticide time to work (at least 24 hours), then remove the litter from the

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houses and take it at least one kilometer away from the farm. Keep the litter
covered as some insects can fly away from the litter and relocate to other
houses on the farm. Additionally, a common mistake is to remove litter from
one house after other houses on the farm have already been cleaned. This
can cause the contamination of cleaned houses by insects, organic materials,
and even pathogens. If more than one house on a farm is cleaned on the
same day, take steps to prevent contaminating cleaned houses.

When cleaning, begin at the top of the walls and ceiling and work downward
to prevent recontaminating cleaned areas.
Once the organic material has been removed, start washing the house and
equipment. Begin with the top of the house and work down. If any equipment
cannot be washed, remove it and dry clean it. (The durability and waterproof
characteristics of equipment must be considered when purchasing.) The
cleaning procedure must include all rooms in direct and indirect contact with
the poultry houses, including showers and storage facilities. It is important
to clean the outside of air inlets and curtains so that when the ventilation is
activated, contaminated dust is not drawn inside the house.
Apply a foam detergent and leave it for the correct time according to the
manufacturer’s instructions. Rinse with high-pressure water, working in one
direction from top to bottom to prevent recontamination.
At this point, reinstall all the equipment and start with the disinfection.
There are several chemicals available for disinfection, but for optimal
efficacy, follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Be aware that some
chemicals have specific temperatures and concentrations at which they work
best. Apply the disinfectant with low-pressure water to ensure that it reaches
all surfaces. Start from the end of the house and proceed toward the
entrance, again to prevent recontamination.
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 Treat the litter with an insecticide before removing it from the house.

Organic matter interferes with the activity of disinfectants; therefore,

it’s very important that surfaces are clean before disinfecting. In some cases,
I have seen people not washing but only disinfecting to speed up the
procedure, and this is completely ineffective. Removing the litter and
washing the house reduces the microbial load by 90% while disinfection in
general represents only 10%.

After liquid disinfection has finished and all equipment has been reinstalled,
it is time to fumigate. Again, for it to be effective, use the right concentration
(normally calculated in m³) at the correct temperature for the correct time
following the manufacturer’s instructions. Following treatment, ventilate the
house to remove any chemical residual. After litter placement, the house can
be fumigated again; however, use caution with products that require ignition
as they present a fire hazard. Spray disinfectants are also available but can
leave residues that are potentially harmful to chicks.

Clean poultry houses are the basis for a healthy and productive flock.

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INFORMATION SHEET 2.2: Brood and Grow Chicks
Brooding and Growing Chicks
Raising chicks can be rewarding, fun and sometimes just plain
confusing. What temperature should their habitat be? Why aren’t they eating
the chick food but instead seem to find shavings the tastiest thing possible?
Is it normal to lose one chick? What about five? Brooding, done correctly,
can be a wonderful experience, and it can be a great alternative to buying
adult birds.
What is Brooding?
Technically, brooding is defined as the period from hatching until
supplemental heat is no longer needed. For most people, this means the time
period that the chicks need to be kept inside or with a heat lamp, which is
generally somewhere between three to eight weeks. The smaller and slower-
growing the breed is, the longer it will need the support of brooding.

This is a critical time for your chicks. They’re growing rapidly; they can’t
handle most outdoor environments because they don’t regulate temperature
as adult chickens do; and they’re at their most vulnerable for disease.
Brooding is also when incorrect incubation or poor parent stock is most
obvious; sickly chicks are more difficult to raise and require more extensive
management.

Luckily, there are a few ways that brooding can be explained to make sense
of it all. Many of these categories are the same for adult-bird management,
but instead of a one-size-fits-all mentality, you will have to alter and change
the environment and the rules as your birds grow.

There are eight different things chicken keepers need to remember when they
are brooding any kind of bird, be it chickens, turkeys or quail:

 light
 temperature
 ventilation
 humidity
 bedding
 feed
 water
 mortality

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Light and Temperature

Your lighting fixture fills two

needs: heat and light to see by.
Most backyard chickens are raised
with heat lamps hung over the
brooder. These lamps are easy to
find at local feed-supply stores or
online and are easy on the wallet—
something that can’t be said for
pan brooders or heaters. The
temperature generated by a heat
lamp is easily adjusted by raising
and lowering the lamp. Remember,
never hang lamps by their electrical
cord, as his is the easiest way to
start a fire; instead, use a chain or rope.

Pan brooders or heaters are generally used in larger brooding situations (i.e.,
commercial flocks) and are large and expensive for the average small flock. In
fact, even mid-sized flocks often use multiple heat lamps to save the initial
investment and ongoing expense of other heating options.

Heat lamps also offer another positive: color conditioning. Color conditioning
uses different colors of lamps (red being the most common) to change chick
behavior. While studies on blue, yellow and green lighting have not shown
any significant change in chick behavior, red lamps have been shown to
reduce aggression in most species of poultry. For this reason, most vendors
will offer red lights next to their typical incandescent models .

While it sounds easy to adjust your brooder temperature by changing the

height of your lamp, in practice, it can be difficult. Technically, you should
have a thermometer in the center of your brooder and a thermometer on the
edge of your brooder, with at most a 10-degree difference between the two
thermometers. Different chick ages have different temperature requirements;
on the first day, start with the center temperature being 90 to 95 degrees F,
and reduce by 5 degrees each week.

In reality, most people follow the cluster rule: If your chicks are clustered all
under the lamp, it’s too cool, and if your chicks are all clustered around the
edge of the brooder, it’s too warm. Optimally, they should be spread
throughout the brooder comfortably moving around.

The main thing to remember if you are maintaining the temperature of your
brooder via a method other than heat lamps is that chickens aren’t always
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very good at self preservation. Using a heating pad can result in severe burns
on the feet and keel, and using a heat source that is horizontal to the
brooder, such as a standing heater, can cause some chicks to burn or
overheat as the ones behind push them too close to the heat source. Next to
heat lamps, overhead heaters, such as lamp or pan brooders, tend to be the
safest method giving the chicks the possibility of searching their temperature
comfort zone.

Ventilation and Humidity

Similar to light and heating, ventilation and humidity are very closely
related. High ventilation lowers your humidity by blowing the water vapor in
the air away, and low ventilation can cause humidity to become too high,
creating a soggy environment. Balancing the two against each other tends to
be easy in small brooding situations but becomes more difficult with a larger
flock size.

Ventilation is primarily important for preventing ammonia fumes; anyone

who has raised chicks in an enclosed area knows that how potent that eye-
burning odor in an uncleaned brooder can get. However, you must be careful
not to become overzealous with your ventilating and create drafts that can
chill the chicks. Most brooders with an open top or a mesh/wire top will have
adequate ventilation without any fans needed. Just be aware that high-sided
tubs or closed barns may not have adequate ventilation down on the floor
where the chicks are, even if there is airflow through the top regions.

Humidity isn’t as much an issue with small flocks as it is for commercial

flocks: Few small flock brooders are fully closed systems that allow humidity
to build up to worrying levels. Check your bedding to make sure it hasn’t
grown moist; if it’s reasonably dry, then your humidity is fine. If the litter is
wet and you feel that the chicks won’t become chilled, you can increase
ventilation as a way to dry the litter. If you want to be very prepared, you can
buy a hygrometer to measure the humidity during brooding: During the first
week, 30 to 50 percent is considered best, while 40 to 60 percent after the
first week is recommended.

Bedding
There are two basic rules of thumb for brooder bedding:

1. Change it often.
2. Change it well.
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In small flocks, changing your bedding is the best way to prevent mold, smell
and disease. Using absorbent litter material is critical: Pine shavings and rice
hulls are best. Straw, hardwood shavings (particularly oak) and paper are
not actually good options despite the fact that they’re used commonly. Straw
doesn’t absorb water from feces well and tends to forms mats easily.
Hardwood shavings can have toxins from mold on them, and paper is not
absorbent and can also have toxic inks. A properly absorbent bedding will
reduce your smell and dust quotients, and clean bedding will reduce disease
and mortality; it’s a win-win!

Feed
Nutrition is often the trickiest part for new poultry owners. When do you feed
a starter versus a layer versus a grower diet? What’s the difference anyhow?

Starter feed is developed to be correct nutritionally for growing birds, and to

make things even easier, you can use the same starter for meat and layer
birds. It’s formulated to be high in protein—around 20 percent—and should
be fed for the first 8 weeks of life.

The range of how long to feed depends on your breed. Slow-growing show
breeds need that nutritional support for longer, while the fast-growing meat
birds are ready to move onto their personal in-between food (often called
grower food) within a few weeks. Layer and show breeds skip this step and
are transitioned directly onto a maintenance adult diet, which is often called
a layer diet. Meanwhile, meat birds are transitioned onto their final diet,
called finisher feed, a few weeks before butchering.

Another worry small flock owners have about their feed concerns hormones
and antibiotics. Many people are trying to raise their flocks organically and
have all sorts of questions for which the media and the internet have a
variety of conflicting answers. Firstly, concerning hormones— no poultry feed
contains hormones of any form. The reason for this is two-fold; a shorter life
span and a lower individual value make using hormones in poultry
economically silly for commercial producers. Since our backyard feed is also
driven by economics and public opinion, no hormones are added there
either.

Antibiotics are another matter. Feed is often sold as “medicated,” which

usually means it contains a medication called amprolium, which is used
exclusively for the treatment of coccidiosis, caused by organisms called
protozoa

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that live in your chickens’ intestines. The good news is that amprolium is
technically an antiparasitic: It kills these protozoa by denying them thiamine,
an essential nutrient. Studies have shown that amprolium is safe to use in
chickens (at recommended doses, of course) and does not transfer to
humans in the meat or eggs. However, many people prefer to skip the
question of antibiotics or medication altogether. Luckily for these people,
there has been an upsurge of organic and medication-free feed in the last 10
years. Most feed-supply stores carry alternative options to the main brands.
Just make sure to compare your labels to a list of required nutrients as not
all of these feeds are nutritionally balanced for chicks.

You also have to consider what is dispensing your feed. Chicks in their first
few days of life need easily accessible food. Place paper down under the heat
lamps with food sprinkled on it for the first few days, with food in semi-open
to open containers at the edge of the paper.

Trough feeders or pan feeders are best for this time period; it’s worth some
feces in your food for those important days to make sure you don’t have
starved-out chicks. Trough feeders are particularly nice, as most have a roof
attachment with head holes for when chicks are a little older to prevent them
from pooping in the feeder. Bell feeders are another option for older chicks;
just be careful with smaller chicks, as they may try to climb inside the feeder
and get stuck!

Water

The water system you choose for brooding dictates the watering system you
should use later in life. Chickens can relearn a drinking system, but you may
have issues with dehydration or even mortality while they are getting the
hang of the new waterer. As such, if your birds drink from a bucket or bell
drinker as adults, you should have a bell waterer for them as chicks. If you
are lucky enough to have nipple drinkers in your pens, chicks will need to be
started on a nipple system. It’s inadvisable to have an open dish or pans
filled with water in a brooder as chicks can fall in and drown or become
chilled in even a very shallow dish.

You should change the water twice daily to reduce fecal, food or bedding
contamination. Water systems should be scrubbed or flushed/washed with a
diluted bleach system weekly to prevent mold and bacterial growth (1
tablespoon chlorine bleach to 1 gallon of water). In addition, water should
always be available; don’t remove the waterer at night or for more than 15
minutes at any time.

If you need to give any medications, particularly antibiotics or

mineral/vitamin additives, that are dispensed via water, change out the
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water once daily to prevent wasting your medicine. Talk with your
veterinarian for chicken medication because only a few drugs are approved
for their use in poultry.

Mortality
As depressing as it is, mortality is a sad side effect of brooding. No matter how perfect
your system is, there will be deaths. Some of these may be from poor chick quality,
pecking or starvation from competition. A little bit of mortality is to be expected, but
excessive mortality is a good indicator that something is going wrong. Keeping track of
your losses will help you know if something is wrong and may allow you to figure out
what the exact cause could be.

Expect to lose 1 to 2 percent of your chicks during the brooding period; this will
increase if they were chilled, dehydrated, had infected navels or were obtained from poor
or young breeding stocks. Losing more than this during your first week indicates a bad
chick source, a bad batch of chicks or improper management; losing them after the first
week is always incorrect management. By keeping track of your losses, you can tell
whether you should be looking more closely at your incubation system, your initial
management habits or your long-term brooding management.

If you do start having excessive mortality, a necropsy is never a bad idea. Necropsies
can pick up on specific causes of death and that can go a long ways toward preventing a
similar issue in the future. Contact your local state laboratory for necropsy services;
some states subsidize this service.

The Brooder

So, now that you have all your aspects of brooding chickens under control,
how do you get started? You should first begin with where you plan to raise
these future chicks. (We say “future chicks” because setting up
a brooder should not happen when you already have an incubator or box of
chicks ready to place.)

Incubators should be ready to go when the chicks are placed, which means a
minimum of six hours of heating beforehand. The larger the brooding area,
the earlier you will need to begin your preplacement heating. Preferably, you
have been monitoring the temperature in your brooder for 12 to 24 hours to
make sure there won’t be any unforeseen fluctuations.

Everything must be cleaned and disinfected between broods. Bleach,

sunlight and some good old-fashioned scrubbing are usually enough to
prevent disease transference between flocks. Remember, disinfection without
cleaning is not effective.

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When you are setting up the logistics of the brooder, keep the feeder and
waterer next to the heat source; if chicks have to explore, some won’t find the
them. A good brooding setup should allow the chicks to sit directly under or
by their heat source and easily see the food and water. What you use as a
brooder can vary quite a lot. Plastic kiddie pools are very popular, as are
plastic bins, cardboard rings and wooden boxes. Honestly, any pen or setup
that meets the needs listed previously and can be easily cleaned will make a
good brooder.

Brooding outdoors will require a little extra monitoring to make sure that
drafts or external temperature changes don’t throw off your carefully set-up
little environment. Brooding indoors takes out some of the temperature
variations but opens up the dangers of cats, dogs, small children and dust
from the chicks in your living quarters.

Brooding is an ongoing learning experience but follow these rules and you
will be well on your way to being a master brooder. The good news is that
brooding is a relatively small fraction of your chickens’ lives. Once the chicks
are feathered and able to control their own body temperatures or the outdoor
climate is favorable enough, they can go outside to begin their grown-up life.
This is usually somewhere between 3 and 8 weeks of age, depending on the
breed. Many people will still have a night light heat lamp to make sure all
their hard work isn’t undone by one cold night and continue to provide
starter feed for a few extra weeks.

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