Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Outdoor Industries/Poultry Raising

a. Incubators
An Incubator is a chamber designed to hold fertile eggs at a controlled temperature and humidity. If temperature is held to 101.5 °F, the eggs will hatch after 21 days. An incubator is needed for hatching eggs if the hen is unavailable (such is the case if the fertile eggs are bought from a supplier).

b. Hovers
A hover, also called a brooder, is similar to a large, shallow upturned box with legs to raise it off the floor. Heat lamps are mounted on the inside of the box. Chicks gather under the hover for warmth.

c. Sanitary fowl houses
A sanitary fowl house is a small structure (typically 6'x4'x6' tall) designed to securely house poultry. The house is partitioned into several small rooms suitable for housing a few birds each. The bottom of each room is screened so that waste falls away from the fowl.

d. Coops
A coop is a building where poultry are kept. The inside of the coop normally consists of several nesting boxes just large enough for the birds to sit in while laying their eggs, as well as perches for the them to use while sleeping. Often the floor of the coop is covered with a material, such as straw or wood chips, to contain the bird waste, and to allow easier cleanup of the coop. Sometimes the coop contains feeding and watering devices for the birds, but these may also be kept outside of the coop, in the run. Most have some kind of ventilation to help air out any odors that may occur.

Since poultry are often prone to illness from drafts and poor weather, coops are best designed to be warm at cold times, cool at hot times, and as draft free as possible.

e. Runs
Runs are fenced in areas for poultry to get fresh air and exercise. If runs are not used most people let their birds roam free during the day.

4. Candle a number of eggs, finding at least one bad egg. What is the purpose of candling eggs?
You will need to build a simple apparatus to candle your eggs. It is simply an opaque box with a lightbulb inside, and a hole slightly smaller than the diameter of an egg cut into the top.

Place an egg on the hole and turn on the light. If you see a cloudy formation inside the egg, you can assume that it has been fertilized (the cloud is a developing embryo). This should be done after 2 or 3 days of incubation. Candling will also reveal cracks in the shell, and a cracked egg is unlikely to develop into a bird.

The purpose of candling is to determine which eggs have been fertilized and to detect bad eggs. Not all of the eggs are likely to be fertile. Fertility rates range from 50% to 95% in a healthy flock, with a 75% hatch rate being very good.

Always remove unfertilized eggs from the incubator. If you let them go, they will rot.

Hatchlings
It's pretty much obvious, but baby chickens need to drink. Under no circumstances give them un-boiled water. Their immune systems might not handle the germs just yet. Grain coffee (coffee made from oats or summat, as opposed to coffee made from coffee beans) is quite suitable for them. Make sure it's not hot. A good way to serve drink is to pour it into a large wide-mouthed jar, put a dish on top of the jar upside down, then flip the whole thing, so that the jar is upside down, standing on the dish. It should leak just enough coffee onto the dish so that the baby chickens can have a drink, and leak more when they have drunk some.

Baby chickens won't eat just any old thing. Milled oats are a good thing to feed them, at least initially. Hard boiled eggs (cut up into appropriate bite sized pieces, of course) go with the milled oats quite well. You may want to ask around in agriculture stores about special feed for baby chickens. DON'T FEED THEM BREAD! It will kill them. It's good to add cut-up lettuce to the baby chickens' diet. If you're not squeamish, small, flightless bugs, like centipedes can be entertaining, as well as nutritional to the chickens, just don't give those straight off to new-hatches, okay?

Grown Up (But Still Baby) Chicks
Remember those special foods for baby chickens? It's a kind of meal, only with vitamins, minerals and what not. It's good for them. Mashed potatoes mixed with that meal, are better. And the chickens like it VERY much. Cut-up lettuce, cabbage, grass is fine at this point. Insects are always welcome.

Adults
Feeding chickens is almost as easy as watering them. In nature chickens are the garbage cleaners of the Southeast Asian Jungle. For everyday food you can feed your chickens either chicken food (found at feed stores) or pig food. In Alberta the UFA Hog Grower is the same as the chick starter except the pellets are bigger, and the hog grower contains less antibiotics. If you have access to grain then you can feed that to them. Whenever you make food with lots of scraps (peelings and bits of vegetables that humans shouldn't eat) then feed those to them. Chickens can be trained so well if they see a small bucket (for carrying chicken scraps) they get excited because a treat is coming. You can feed your chickens in a trough, appropriate sized container, or by scattering the food on the ground. You can even give your chickens bones with scraps of meat on them. There is very little that they won't eat.

Information Specific to Laying Hens
Laying hens require calcium for egg shells. During the laying season, put a pile or box of crushed clam shells in their pen. Crushed clam shells are available at most local feed/farm stores. If you scatter the clam shells too much, you won't know when the hens need more until you see paper-thin shells. Egg shells also work for the calcium, but you run the risk of the birds learning to eat their own eggs. To avoid this you should crush the shells so that they don't look like eggs.

7. Make, buy, or rent an incubator and hatch six poultry eggs of your choice, with a 50% hatch.
Buying a new incubator is certainly the most convenient of these options, though you will pay a handsome price for the convenience. If you are planning to enter the poultry trade for the long term, it would probably be worth it. Otherwise, you should look into renting, buying used, or (if you possess the skills) building one yourself.

http://msucares.com/poultry/reproductions/poultry_make_incubator.html has plans for building two incubators; one from a polystyrene ice chest, and a more permanent model from plywood. A quick Internet search will turn up even more plans for you to choose from.

Once you have an incubator, it is very important to operate it for several hours before you add any eggs to it. These "practice" runs will help you learn to operate it at the proper and constant temperature. Do not add eggs until you have achieved stable operation at the required temperature. If you overheat the eggs, they will not hatch.

Once the incubator is on operation, you will be required to turn the eggs three times per day. If your incubator has an automatic turner built-in, this will obviously be a lot easier. Otherwise, mark one side of each egg with an X, and the other side with an O, and place all the eggs in the incubator with either the X or the O side up. This will help you keep track of which eggs you have already turned.

A few days before hatching (exactly how many days depends on the species) you should quit turning the eggs and boost the humidity. Once the eggs hatch, you can leave the hatchlings in the incubator for several days until they are large enough to use the hover.

Incubators generally have a wire mesh floor that can be easily lifted out for cleaning.

8. Raise these fowl for at least three months.
Have fun!

You can usually find information on poultry care on the computer or at your library.