Maintenance of laying hens in winter
When breeding chickens, each farmer needs to know what kind of content of laying hens in winter is required to provide birds with what kind of heating they need. Surrounding hens with the most comfortable living conditions is one of the best signs of care. Especially for feathered pets, comfortable conditions can help increase productivity and improve health. But how to ensure acceptable conditions in the winter season to take care of farm chickens, when their egg production systematically decreases, and their main instinct at this time of the year is independent reproduction. At the same time, keeping chickens at home in winter differs significantly from the life of laying hens in enterprises.
Keeping chickens in winter
Taking care of birds during the winter season is very important as this is a special season. At this time, it is worth paying close attention not only to the room in which you keep your chickens, but also to their nutrition... The farmer needs to know what temperature the chickens can withstand at home in winter. They must have a heated living space. If there is no such function, then the chickens may freeze with the arrival of cold weather. Sometimes farmers keep their pets in a polycarbonate greenhouse in winter, as this is the easiest solution if you do not have a warm room.
How to prepare a chicken coop for frost?
You should take care of the winter keeping of chickens as early as possible before the onset of the frosts themselves, even in the autumn-winter period. The best "wintering" premises are wooden poultry houses, greenhouses or garages. The most important condition when choosing a room is the absence of any holes through which a cold wind can blow into the future chicken coop. Also, in the future house, a ventilation system should be equipped, since fresh air must be present throughout the year and chickens will not suffer from a lack of oxygen in winter. Growing and keeping of domestic broilers, chickens and chickens should be carried out in a clean room, where birds will also be provided with perches, perches, feeders and drinkers.
An obligatory step in preparing a chicken coop is disinfection... You need to disinfect the room thoroughly and completely before the wintering of your chickens begins. The walls and floor should be brushed with disinfectants. At the time of cleaning, all individuals should be removed from the premises. Birds should not inhale chemicals. Usually a limestone solution is used for this purpose in proportions of 10 liters of water to 2 kilograms of lime, but some poultry farmers also use blowtorches during the process itself.
If the future poultry house is covered with mold, then chickens cannot live in this room and caring for chickens in winter will turn into their death. Damp waste and fungal diseases will attack your herd.If individuals are bred in such conditions, then they die, limp, fall to their feet and suffer from various diseases. in order for the laying hen to give the laid rate of eggs in the winter season, the conditions of detention must be proper. If you are planning to build a winter version of the poultry house in a former greenhouse, then you need to remove all old weeds from the soil.
Warming the room
If you provided chickens uninsulated poultry house, then it needs to be insulated with improvised means. The floor is prepared as follows: it is covered with sawdust, straw and peat. All this needs to be well worn down in order to lay the layers of litter. A well-prepared chicken coop litter is guaranteed to keep the temperature from 12 to 18 ° C. Old bedding that you used in another room cannot be used. The litter should be fresh and new. The walls can be sheathed with plywood boards. If there are holes in the walls or on the floor of the room, then they should be repaired with putty. Also, through the holes in the floor and the smell of grain, rodents can come, which are carriers of diseases. If you are preparing for winter in a region that promises severe frosts, you should be prepared for the fact that your chicken coop will not do without heaters.
However, in this situation, it is also worth providing the chicken coop with enough fresh air. Watch out for drafts. With a constant supply of fresh air to the hen house, the perches of the layers should be located clearly at a distance of about 60 centimeters from the floor. Heating devices should not be turned off even at night, otherwise the room cools down quickly in severe frosts and the birds may freeze. If you plan to breed chickens in winter, then immediately after birth they can be placed in a wide box and a 60-watt lamp can be attached on top. Heat and supply lighting it is necessary for whole days until the young grow up.
If you notice that the chickens are huddled together and shivering, then this is a sure indicator that the birds are cold. In this case, the lamp should be lowered slightly closer to the box. If the youngsters scattered in the corners, the feathers are upright, the legs do not hold, the tongue is thrown out, then this indicates that the birds are too hot. to lower the temperature, raise the lamp. Indicators of humidity and temperature should be kept at the following marks: temperature should not exceed 18 ° С, humidity - 70%. Chickens will lay eggs equally worse when these parameters are exceeded and when these parameters are insufficient.
Lighting in the chicken coop
The next problem facing poultry farmers preparing a chicken coop for winter is lighting. With the right lighting, it is quite possible to preserve the fertility of layers and even slightly increase their productivity. This requires exclusively fluorescent lamps, since conventional lamps for this purpose are ineffective and weak. It is worth installing the lamps as high as possible in places that the chickens cannot reach - due to their natural curiosity.
The most optimal daylight hours for chickens during winter is divided into two "periods": from 6 am to 9, after - from 5 pm to 9:30 maximum. We also recommend that you take into account and prevent the presence of constant, stable electricity in advance - layers are extremely poorly tolerated by interruptions in lighting. It is very good if you have a constant and uninterrupted source of electricity - for example, a generator. Then the winter keeping of laying hens will bring joy without disappointment. You can see in more detail how to install lighting in a poultry house in a photo or video.
Criteria for a winter diet for chickens
An important role in the nutrition of chickens in winter is played by vitamins and vitamin complexes. It is highly desirable that they are constantly present in food. Good condition and health, as well as the productivity of birds, depends on a properly composed diet. The main food for chickens in winter is hay from leafy grasses, harvested since the summer season.You can also prepare in advance small bundles of various herbs: clover, nettle, mouse peas, and hang them in the chicken coop so that the birds can reach them and the maintenance of chickens in the autumn and winter period will take place with vitamins.
Since the main percentage of the winter diet comes from cereals, it is also worth giving chopped boiled vegetables (potatoes, beets, carrots and zucchini). Poultry eat such vegetables well. You can make a mixture of vegetables. During the cold season, food should be slightly warm, but not cold. You should drink in small portions. The fact is that the birds need to warm up and eat a lukewarm liquid mash or pâté. It is worth feeding the birds in a certain systematic manner and without interruption: at 8:00 and 13:00, serve mash, mixtures, and in the evening at 18:00 - hay and whole grains.
Mushroom birds should not be given in the evening - they are fed in the morning and at lunchtime, while in the evening there is a denser dinner with an emphasis on cereals. Drinking water should be clean and warm. At the first signs of contamination, as well as water cooling - the drinkers should be rinsed, the water should be replaced. During the winter, the drink of both adults and young growth must be warm, it must be regularly warmed up.
Vitamins in the winter season for birds
What should be done so that the birds do not suffer from vitamin deficiency and poor health in winter how to keep laying hens in winter? The winter diet must necessarily include sucrose, calcium and carotene. Among these three elements, calcium-based dressing is one of the most important, since when it is lacking, egg the shell becomes thinner, it cracks more easily, and the layers themselves, in the absence of calcium in the food, may stop carrying at all. The optimal solution is the presence in the hen house of a separate container for chalk, gravel, crushed shells or small pebbles, that is, pure calcium. If you notice that the shells of the eggs become softer, this is a direct sign that some measure is needed to replenish the calcium in the diet. Carotene will enter the body of birds with chopped carrots, sucrose - with the help of boiled potatoes. These vitamins are essential for maintaining the immunity of chickens and their good health.
It is quite favorable and successful if you live in the country - this makes it possible to diversify and fill the diet of chickens with grain waste (for example, barley or corn seeds) and keeping your chickens in winter will not be difficult. The greatest benefit comes from sunflower seed cake, it is an excellent source of the required amount of protein and fat for poultry. With the correct combination, distribution and systematic nutrition, the cake will retain the ability of chickens to bear, until the very end of winter, until the beginning of spring. If you do not follow the correct diet, on which the well-being of birds in winter depends, then the pets lose their feathers, do not go out for a walk, after which they stop laying eggs or die.
Winter walks
At any time of the year, laying hens need walks and fresh air. It is important to be able to provide this to them in winter, not only in warm seasons. For winter walking, summer is suitable for someone aviary, and someone equipped with a greenhouse. If you keep individuals in a polycarbonate greenhouse, then next to it you can build a kind of balcony. If the weather outside in winter is calm, the temperature is about 0, then you can release layers on such a balcony for at least 5-10 minutes, even if there is snow around. It is better to fence the aviary for reliability with wooden fences, using brushwood, reeds or straw so that keeping your chickens in winter does not turn into hunting for them in neighboring areas.
It is worth noting that if the chickens live in a summer cottage in a temporary poultry house in the winter season, then this is not bad at all. Most breeds tolerate cold weather fairly well, but they should not be released at temperatures below -12 ° C.How long should the walk take in winter? The maximum duration of a winter walk is 2 hours a day, but no more - so that the birds do not freeze. It is also not worth giving them an open area of the poultry house, since the birds may not feel how they freeze. All walks must be supervised by the farmer. On the video networks, you can see healthy and mobile chickens briskly running in the snow when the weather is not very frosty.
You can also walk them outside, but it is important to know that in snowy weather, the walk is automatically reduced to 15 minutes. Before a walk, you need to lay a bedding on the ground, the same as in the chicken coop itself.
What to do if the fertility of chickens decreases?
If you notice that the number of eggs is systematically decreasing - reconsider the diet of the birds, dilute the nutrition with vitamins that may have been lacking before (and caused the decline in productivity). Also, short daylight hours are sometimes listed among the reasons. poultry farmers in urgent cases increase it to 14 hours - but at the same time, not forgetting that such a long daylight hours can significantly shorten the life of chickens. It is worth increasing daylight hours only as a last resort, with caution and prudence. Always keep the optimum temperature in the hen house, from 12 to 18 ° C, so that the winter keeping of the hens does not differ much from the autumn and spring ones.
Make sure that it is well insulated, exclude drafts. An important factor in comfort is the dryness and cleanliness of the litter. If the room is dirty and chicken droppings are everywhere, then this can also cause apathy, illness and deterioration in the quality of egg production. Chicken droppings, when decomposed for a long time, release harmful substances that chickens should not breathe. If this rule is not followed, then the birds may develop ammonia sickness. Disinfect the room completely once a week. Drinkers and feeders should be cleaned daily, and chicken droppings should be removed. You need to take care of the birds carefully, then they will thank you with tasty and healthy eggs.
Useful Tips
The winter, cold period requires more active participation and attention to the living conditions of chickens. The conclusion is that any factor can undermine the well-being and productivity of birds - and a lack of any elements in the diet and a violation of temperature, drafts or insufficient lighting in the chicken coop. All these factors must be closely monitored to prevent disruptions in the ability of chickens to lay eggs.
- The litter needs regular cleaning. To prevent excess droppings from rolling down in it, it is useful to scatter grain over its entire area. This is both useful and practical - the grain will provide the birds with the necessary vitamins, which they need in the cold season, and that is why the chickens themselves will actively loosen the litter with their beaks in search of it. In addition, it is recommended to loosen the litter with a rake more often.
- In the aviary, as in the hen house, there must be containers with sand and ash. After a walk, individuals can clean the feathers and remove bugs and debris from them. These containers must be removed after each walk to keep them dry.
- If you want to increase or, on the contrary, decrease daylight hours for layers, do it gradually every day. Because of the drastic changes, chickens are physically unable to endure without stress. Closer to the beginning of spring, the length of daylight hours can be gradually reduced.
- When rearing eggs through an incubator, do not wipe off the protective film from the shell, otherwise this may serve to the penetration of bacteria to the future chick. If chicken droppings are visible on the egg, then it should be carefully removed with a dry napkin; there is no need to wash the shell.
- Birds should be given whole grains for dinner. Do not give soft mash.In addition to providing vitamins, grain feeding has its own strategic step - it will take chickens a whole night to digest high-calorie whole grains, during which they will significantly warm up.
- Give your birds new nests closer to winter. New, secluded nests are able to increase the productivity of layers. Don't perch and nest too high. It should be convenient for birds to get to them.
- Calculate the area of \ u200b \ u200bthe chicken coop in the formula 1 square meter per 1 individual. If the birds are cramped, many of their vital signs will decrease, therefore walking is desirable. Parents and their offspring must be kept together. If the laying hen realizes that you have taken the chicks, she may become stressed and stop laying eggs. At first, the female with the babies should grow and walk together.