Raising Eggs At Home Not A Bad Idea
Brian Triplett
A couple of weeks ago in this column I talked about raising eggs at home and how there seemed to be a little more renewed interest in people taking an active role in the production of their own food. This week I thought I would follow up with tips on raising your own broilers.
Raising your own chickens for meat may not be less expensive than buying them in the store when you factor in the initial cost of housing and the time it takes to care for the birds. However, it can offer a great approach to teaching children about responsibility, and can help them make a connection between production agriculture and the food we eat. Plus, the manure and litter that are a bi-product of raising chickens can be composted to produce an excellent organic matter and fertilizer source for the garden or flower bed.
As we mentioned in our discussion on raising pullets, start with a broiler strain of chicks purchased from a reputable source and keep them in a brooder with supplemental heat until they are seven days old. If you are starting to raise a batch of broilers when it is colder than 70 degrees outside, plan to decrease supplemental heat until the birds are at the normal outside temperature, at about three to four weeks of age.
The ultimate size of the broiler house that you need to build depends upon how many chickens you plan to raise at a time. Each broiler needs at least 1 square foot of space in the broiler house. As previously mentioned, pine shavings or sawdust makes the best litter surface on which to raise the chicks.
In contrast to raising pullets for egg production, which takes about six months, broilers grow very fast. With today’s total mixed feed rations and utilizing 24-hour lighting, you can produce a ready-to-process broiler in six to eight weeks. If desired, you can keep a few of the broilers and feed them for another four weeks to produce a chicken that can be used for roasting whole or deep-frying like a small turkey.
Broilers need to be fed a high quality ration that contains at least 20 percent protein. Many people start broiler chicks on turkey or game bird starting rations. Some people feed on these types of rations the entire time if they want to maximize growth in a short period of time. Other people switch to a broiler feed at about two to four weeks of age. Electrolytes should be added to the drinking water for the first two weeks to prevent leg problems.
Make sure that you have adequate space for the feeder and water dispenser so that all the birds can eat or drink at the same time. One tube-type feeder and one automatic water dispenser per every 25 birds should be adequate. For ease of drinking and eating, feeders and watering devices should be installed so that they can be adjusted in height (keep even with the back of the birds) as the birds grow.
Broilers should not be allowed to get too hot or too cold. When building a broiler house, consider making the bottom 3 feet of the sides out of a wire material that will keep small rodents out but will allow for good air movement.
Broilers can also be raised in free-range environments, but these require more space for the housing system (some of which can be designed to move around one’s property) and generally take longer than the intensively managed method to produce a broiler ready to process. For more information on raising broilers, visit my blog entry on broilers at “Blogging with Brian” at http://agrilifeblogs.tamu.edu/mt/smith.
Brian Triplett is the Smith County Extension agent for agriculture and natural resources. He can be reached at 903-590-2980 or via e-mail at b-triplett@tamu.edu or on the Web at http://agrilifeblogs.tamu.edu/mt/smith or http://smith-tx.tamu.edu.
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