Diary

Table birds and replacement laying hensRSS feed

Posted: Tuesday 16 August, 2005

by Rosemary at 9:26pm in Poultry Comments closed

Well, we've finally bitten the bullet and ordered our incubator, brooder and despatcher. This is the first step towards raising our own layer flock replacements and raising our own table birds. We have ordered a kit from Ascott Smallholding Supplies.

We intend to buy fertilised eggs - the incubator we have bought takes 24 hen eggs but we might start with 12. Once the equipment arrives, we'll spend a few days playing with it (we might even read the instructions) and sussing out what else we need before we start.

We're going to use feed from the Allen and Page Smallholder Range - Baby Chick Crumbs, followed by Poultry Grower Pellets. The chick crumbs come in 5kg bags as well as 20kg bags, so that's quite helpful. The crumbs are coccidiostat free.

The plan is to put the incubator in the guest room (I suppose they are little guests and they won't dirty the ensuite). Once hatched, we plan to move the chicks to a round pen (so they can't get trapped in the corners) in the garage with the brooder light above. Once feathered and ready to go ouside, we will move the layers to the wee ark and the young poultry to the big ark with the extension run. There should be plenty room for them and they will be moved to fresh grass each day.

That's the plan, anyway. We'll keep you posted of developments.

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