Chicken Farm

Chicken farm is where domesticated chickens are raised. These chickens are raised for their meat and eggs. Chickens are the most common Bird raised for both meat and eggs. Chickens that are raised for their Chicken meat are called broilers. Chickens that are raised for eggs are called laying hens or layers. Some breeds of chickens are raised on hobby farms  for shows and competitions.

Chicken Farm Activities. Bellow are some of the routine chicken farm activities:

• Preparing the chicken house for the arrival of the birds
• Feeding the birds
• Monitoring the conditions inside the chicken houses, including temperature, humidity, and air quality
• Monitoring the feed and water lines to make sure they are providing the birds with fresh water and feed

• Monitoring the health of the birds
• Cleaning the poultry houses or coops
• Collecting eggs (for laying hens and broiler breeders)
• Loading chickens onto trucks for moving to processing plants (for meat chickens or turkeys)

Diseases

Chickens are quite susceptible to a number of diseases. Some of the more common are fowl typhoid, fowl cholera, chronic respiratory disease, infectious sinusitis, infectious, avian infectious hepatitis, infectious synovitis, , Newcastle disease, fowl pox, coccidiosis, blackhead, infectious bronchitis, and erysipelas. Strict sanitary precautions, the intelligent use of antibiotics and vaccines. Widespread use of cages for layers and confinement rearing for broilers. These have made it possible to effect satisfactory disease control.

Outbreaks of bird flu, or avian influenza, which was first detected in humans in 1997, have led to the culling of millions of poultry animals since the late 20th century. Waterfowl such as wild ducks are thought to be primary hosts for all bird flu subtypes. Though normally resistant to the viruses, the birds carry them in their intestines and distribute them through feces into the environment, where they infect susceptible domestic birds. Sick birds pass the viruses to healthy birds through saliva, nasal secretions, and feces.

Within a single zone, bird flu is transmitted readily from farm to farm by airborne feces-contaminated dust and soil, by contaminated clothing, feed, and equipment, or by wild animals carrying the virus on their bodies. The disease is spread from region to region by migratory birds and through international trade in live poultry. Humans who are in close contact with sick birds—for example, poultry farmers and slaughterhouse workers—are at the greatest risk of becoming infected. Parasitic diseases of chickens are caused by roundworms, tapeworms, lice, and mites.

Again, modern methods of sanitation, prevention, and treatment provide excellent control.

Feeding

Commercial chicken feeding is a highly perfected science that ensures a maximum intake of energy for growth and fat production. High-quality and well-balanced protein sources produce a maximum amount of muscle, organ, skin, and feather growth. The essential minerals produce bones and eggs, with about three to four percent of the live bird being composed of minerals and ten percent of the egg.

Calcium, phosphorus, sodium, chlorine, potassium, sulfur, manganese, iron, copper, cobalt, magnesium, and zinc are all required. Vitamins A, C, D, E, and K are needed. All of the B vitamins are also required. Antibiotics are widely used to stimulate appetite, control harmful bacteria, and prevent disease. Modern rations produce about half kg (1 pound) of broiler on about (2 pounds) of feed and a dozen eggs from two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of feed.

Management

A carefully controlled environment free from crowding, chilling, overheating, or frightening is almost universal in chicken farming. Cannibalism, which expresses itself as toe picking, feather picking, and tail picking, is reduced by debeaking at one day of age. And by other necessary management practices.

The feeding, watering, egg gathering, and cleaning activities are highly mechanized. Chickens are usually housed in wire cages with two or three animals per cage, depending on the species and breed, and three or four tiers of cages superposed to economize space. Cages for egg-laying birds have been found to increase production, lower mortality, reduce cannibalism, lower feeding requirements, reduce diseases and parasites, improve culling, and reduce both space and labor requirements.

chicken breeding is an outstanding example of the application of basic genetic principles of inbreeding and crossbreeding as well as of intensive mass selection to effect faster and cheaper gains in meat and maximum egg production for the egg-laying strains. Maximum use of heterosis, through in crosses and crossbreeding has been made. Rapid and efficient weight gains and high-quality, plump, meaty carcasses have been achieved thereby.

 A modern broiler chick can reach a 2.3-kg (5-pound) market weight in five weeks, compared with the four months that were required in the mid-20th century. Again, annual egg production per hen has increased from about hundred in 1910 to over three hundred in the early 21st century.

Battery cage

Battery cages are arranged in long rows as multiple tiers, often with cages back-to-back (hence the term). Within a single barn, there may be several floors containing battery cages. It means that a single shed may contain many tens of thousands of hens. Light intensity is often kept low (for example 10 lux) to reduce feather pecking and vent pecking.

Advantages of battery cages include easier care for the birds, floor-laid eggs (which are expensive to collect) are eliminated, eggs are cleaner, capture at the end of lay is expedited, generally less feed is required to produce eggs, broodiness is eliminated, additional hens may be housed in a given house floor space, internal parasites are more easily treated. Labor requirements/demands are generally much lowered.

Yarding

This is actually a separate method by which a hutch and fenced-off area outside are combined when farming poultry. The distinction is that free-range poultry are either totally unfenced, or the fence is so distant that it has little influence on their freedom of movement. Yarding is a common technique used by small farms in the Northeastern U.S. The birds are released daily from  coops. The hens usually lay eggs either on the floor of the coop or in baskets if provided by the farmer. This husbandry technique can be complicated if used with roosters, mostly because of their aggressive behavior.

Organic

In organic egg-laying systems, chickens are also free-range. Organic systems are based upon restrictions on the routine use of synthetic yolk colorants, in-feed or in-water medications, other food additives and synthetic amino acids, and a lower stocking density and smaller group sizes. The Soil Association standards used to certify organic flocks in the United Kingdom, indicate a maximum outdoors stocking density of one thousand birds per hectare and a maximum of two thousand hens in each poultry house. In the United Kingdom, organic laying hens are not routinely beak-trimmed.

Free-run

Free-run laying hens roam freely within an enclosed barn instead of keeping them in cages. This type of housing also provides enrichment for the hens, including nesting boxes and perches that are often located along the floor of the barn. Many believe that this type of housing is better for the bird than any caging system, but it has its shortcomings, too. Due to the increase in activity of the chickens, dust levels tend to elevate and the air quality decreases. When air quality drops, so does production as this compromises the health and welfare of both birds and their caretakers.

Free-range

Free-range chicken farming allows chickens to roam freely for a period of the day, although they are usually confined in sheds at night to protect them from predators, theft or kept indoors if the weather is particularly bad. The benefits of free range poultry farming for laying hens include opportunities for natural behaviors such as pecking, scratching, foraging and exercise outdoors.

Chicken coop

A chicken coop also known as hen house is a structure where chickens or other fowl are kept safe and secure. There may be nest boxes and perches in the house. There is a long-standing controversy over the basic need for a chicken coop. One philosophy, known as the “fresh air school” is that chickens are mostly hardy but can be brought low by confinement, poor air quality and darkness, therefore the need for a highly ventilated or open-sided coop with conditions more like the outdoors, even in winter.

However, others who keep chickens believe they are prone to illness in outdoor weather and need a controlled-environment coop. This has led to two housing designs for chickens: fresh-air houses with wide openings and nothing more than wire mesh between chickens and the weather (even in Northern winters), or closed houses with doors, windows and hatches which can shut off most ventilation.

Egg-laying chickens

Commercial hens usually begin laying eggs at sixteen to twenty one weeks of age, although production gradually declines soon after from approximately twenty-five weeks of age. This means that in many countries, by approximately seventy-five weeks of age, flocks are considered economically unviable and are slaughtered after approximately twelve months of egg production, although chickens will naturally live for six or more years. In some countries, hens are induced molted to re-invigorate egg-laying.

Environmental conditions are often automatically controlled in egg-laying systems. For instance, the duration of the light phase is initially increased to prompt the beginning of egg-laying at sixteen to twenty weeks of age and then mimics summer day length which stimulates the hens to continue laying eggs all year round; normally, egg production occurs only in the warmer months. Some commercial breeds of hen can produce over three hundred eggs a year.

In Conclusion, chicken farming is very productive, profitable and lucrative. I advice you start this business as soon as possible no matter your circumstances, it worth it. Resist that your excuses, procrastination, go ahead and venture. Remember, he/she that observes the wind will not sow at all and delay is dangerous. Do you know that the best time to finish is to start now? That your dream of becoming a billionaire, here is the opportunity. Use it ! Chicken Farm.