Wednesday, February 17, 2010



The chickens arrived today that I'll be using in my experiment. What I'm doing in this video is taking each chick out, one by one, and dipping their beaks into the water. The thirsty chicks stop right there and drink their fill, and then wander off under the brooder.

The brooder is one that I describe building in this post. It easily allows me to brood out 300 chicks at a time, and it's a lot less work than individual bins are. I put a feeder and a waterer on each of the 4 sides.

The chicks are pretty darned cute. Well, they're cute when they first arrive. In a week or so they're a little less cute. In four weeks, well, they're a chore and you're looking forward to seeing them go out on pasture.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Bruce,

Would like to have seen a longer video of the cute chicks. Found your post about the brooder to be most informative, thank you.

Q: Do you also have an infra red or ceramic bulb for heat. If not, how do your chicks fare with having light 24/7?

Cheers,

Friend

Smeltzerville said...

Bruce

How long do you keep the chicks in the Brooder?

Bruce King said...

I use ceramic sockets to hold the bulbs in the brooder. There's pictures of them in the blog entry about building a brooder. The bulbs themselves are either 250 watt infrared heat lamps or clear 250 watt heat lamps.

I prefer the red lamps because it seems to reduce feather picking but have used (and do use) both types

Anonymous said...

Thanks

Friend

Unknown said...

The domestic chicken is descended primarily from the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) and is scientifically classified as the same species. As such it can and does freely interbreed with populations of red jungle fowl. Recent genetic analysis, has revealed that at least the gene for yellow skin, was incorporated into domestic birds through hybridization with the Grey Junglefowl (G. sonneratii).
Yuriy Mizyuk