Poultry Nerds on Brooding Part 1

Getting birds started on the right foot takes knowledge and experience. Get the knowledge here and then tweak it to fit your individual circumstances. This works for all poultry.

• Transcript

  Tony: 0:00

  Welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast, where feathers meet fun. Your podcast hosts are Carey Blackmon and Jennifer Bryant. Together, they work hard to bring you the latest news and information from the world of poultry. So get ready for eggciting interviews, foul facts, and more. Now here's Carey and Jennifer.

  0:17

  Mhm.

  Jennifer: 0:25

  So today we're going to be talking about brooding. We've talked about where to get your eggs from, where to get your starter chicks from, and how to incubate them. So now we're going to move into brooding. And the definition of brooding is just simply the timeline between when the chick hatches until when you put it into its incubator. permanent enclosure. Usually that does include a heat source or at least at the end a temperature controlled space where they don't get a chill, where they're out of a draft. And the timeline for brooding for quail is three to four weeks. Chickens are six to eight weeks. Turkeys are eight to twelve weeks. And ducks do their own thing, but typically I find mine do three to five weeks, maybe. It just depends on the outside temperature. Next question. By brooding, most people think about brooding that they have to have them on heat that whole time. So let's back up just a second. With quail, you said brooding is three to four weeks. How long do you actually put them on heat though? Mine now, of course, a lot of that's going to be weather dependent. I'm in a year in Alabama, so maybe Canadians might run a little bit longer, but me here this time of year, it's March. It's nice outside. I'm taking the heat away from them at 10 to 12 days. See for me, I brood indoors and my barn is heated as well, and when I have young ones in my barn, I usually bump the heat up to about 75 ish, and I start cutting my heat down inside the brooder box. My hatching time units, they have the thermometer on them. I start cutting them down after the first week. And I, like you said, 10 days to two weeks and or no heat. Yeah. So you have to understand where me and you are coming from. We want the strongest to survive the hardiest to survive. We are not going to go out there. We're not hospitalizing. We're not coddling the ones that are falling behind or whatnot. Just for example, I moved some out onto wire in the main part of the barn yesterday, and they were hatched on the 26th, so they are 14 days old today. They are off heat, they are on their own in a wire cage wire sides. They're protected from the draft if the wind were to blow into the barn, but they're just at barn temperature, which is probably in the sixties today. And there's going to be a few fatalities, but again, I'm breeding for hardiness and those are the genetics that I want to continue. Yeah. When you're going for hardiness and you need that vigor and you really want that 16 ounce quail. Only the strong survive and that's I've had people from one of my daughters was in the barn with me the other day. She was like, dad, what are you going to do with those? Those that didn't make it? What happened to him? I said those that bunch right there hatched out 2 weeks ago. It's 70 degrees in here. They're inside that box together. Those didn't make it. They weren't strong. She says what are you going to do? And I said, you know how when you come home sometimes from work and you see those hawks in the field next to us I feed them. We have pigs. Yeah, it is what it is. Yeah. They got to eat too. Yeah. And if if I'm feeding them, the ones that don't survive. Then I don't have to worry about them trying to get into my chicken pens. And we need to explain to people who may be new to this, that we see a lot of posts like on Facebook, social media, that, what caused this chick to die or what did I do wrong? There's a possibility that yes, you did do something wrong, but there are so many possibilities. that it wasn't born correctly. You don't know what's going on inside the system of that bird. It could have twisted up intestines, it could have been born without a stomach, or or not a stomach, but a gizzard. You just don't know. People are born with deformities, and to think that you can save every chick is not a reasonable expectation. So anyway, so when I say I'm putting them out, I'm not saying I'm throwing them out in a blizzard. We're just simply removing a heat source and causing them to pull their big boy britches on a little bit. Now chickens. Again, I have giant birds. They're going to be moving a whole lot faster. I have some Orpingtons out there that are, were hatched on February 2nd. So what are they like at five weeks now? And they are probably standing 10 inches tall right now. Man, those things are probably already asking for a two cheeseburger meal for McDonald's. They are. They, when they have a dog food bowl and we're having to fill it up twice, that's two scoops of feed twice a day. There's only five of them in there and they will literally jump up into the dog food bowl while I'm holding it. Now they have a heat plate. Now they're out in a barn pen on shavings on concrete. They do have a heat plate, but they don't get under it. They might at night, maybe I'm not out there, but during the day, they're up and active and they don't need any heat and if the wind were to blow through there, they're going to get the brunt force of it. So right now I've got some Cornish that are brooding and I'm. I was going to kick them out at two weeks, but it's getting below the fifties at night. And I've got a camera inside there and I can still see them. I've got a heat, my heat plate after the first week on a cornish, I turn that sucker up sideways. So you know, freeze up room in the floor. And if they're cold, they can huddle up and get each other warm. If they're not, they have plenty of room to get away from it. I went in there the other day and there was a couple of them that was up against it. And I was like, man it's chilly in here. And I looked at my heater and one of my kids had turned the heater down. I'm like, why are y'all in the barn? I can never get y'all to come in here and help me do anything. So why are y'all messing with the heat? But so I turned it back up to 70, but like those things this coming weekend, there'll be three weeks and they're out. They're going to be out of the barn. I've been feeding them. I made some feed specifically for. growth on a meat bird and I am seeing some ridiculous growth out of them. So just to give you an example of the ones that I weighed last night. I do my weigh ins on Sundays, 303 grams, 333 grams, 290, 250, 305, 339, I'm seeing the lowest percentage of gains in one week was 167%, the highest was at 233. Those things are growing like crazy. Two weeks old? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, like they, today, two weeks ago, I picked them up from the post office. The I got a grower recipe that I'm feeding them, and it's working out really well. All right, so Cornish are a little bit different. I got into an argument with a guy on Facebook the other day. He's Cornish shouldn't be treated any different than any other chicken, and that's just simply not true. I'll tell you right now, if you have a heater on a Cornish at two weeks old, they're gonna die of a heat stroke. Yes, they are. If you've never picked up a Cornish before, I mean if you ever had cold hands, just go out there and pick up a Cornish. They are on fire. Like I have I don't always call them muffin fans, but like the computer case fans that are four inches. I have one of those. In each of my brooders that have the cornishes like at the top of it to pull fresh air in and I have them on all day because I went in there one day and my barn was like 75 and I looked over into one of the brooders that had cornish in it and they're like soaking wet. What's, did y'all. I know you're using a bell waterer son, you didn't bust it. Touch the ground around the water, and it's not wet. Picked up one of the chickens, and I was like, oh my God. So they're definitely different. They're very wet. I I think brooding them on stall pellets would be ideal. That's what I'm going to do this year. I did half and half last year. And this year I'm going to do a hundred percent stall pellets. So stall pellets would absorb all of that moisture, but until you have experienced Cornish You don't understand what we're talking about when we say wet. It's very similar to brooding ducklings. And they stank like ducks. They're wet like ducks. They're hot like ducks. Very similar. Yeah. So if you've got a chicken that. Is not intelligent and it'll set out on your porch while it's pouring down rain. That's what a Cornish looks like. Yeah. Regular chickens. On the other hand you do need to keep doing some heat for, what? Three weeks, four weeks. At least offer it to them. And a better place for them. Now, okay, we need to back up just a minute. Now you have two different kinds of heat sources available. You can do plates, brooder plates, which is what I do. And then you can do heat lamps and you can do regular light bulbs in there, reptile heaters, heat bulbs, all kinds of different kind of light bulbs in there. I use brooder plates, but you use lamps, right? I have a lamp that I use, so I call it my overflow brooder. The very first brooder that I used was a hundred gallon stock tank. And I have a lamp that clamps to the top of it where there is no way that anything could ever hit it. And I'm not a huge fan of it because I know that number one, it's very important to get a quality heat lamp. because a regular bulb, they like to bust and catch on fire really easily. And so I only use that in extreme situations. And, I posted a picture on social media the other day of my overflow brooder, because accidentally put. A bunch of Bresse and a bunch of Rhode Island Reds in my incubator about the same time I would be brooding these Cornishes. And, me being partial to the Bresse and really partial to the Reds, they get to stay at the Holiday Inn Express and the Cornish they're staying at the Quality Inn. So they're in the overflow brooder. And I use a heater for that because the brooder plates that I use, by the time I put a feeder, a bell waterer, and a brooder plate, they couldn't move around anywhere in there. And I'm, I know it sounds like a lot having a bell waterer inside of a brooder box, but in that particular brooder, there's 20 Cornish crosses. And they're drinking a couple gallons a day. Oh, yeah, my now when mine come in they'll be in next week the Cornish and I brewed mine in right in the barn pens, so I have an automatic water system and they wear it out. I think mine is 60 gallons and we will be filling it every day. They wear it out. So I I'm lazy on that. People have asked me for pictures recently and I've started sending pictures of my setup. So I use the five gallon bucket in my breeding pens. I feed those with a 5 gallon bucket. I don't care if it's 3 bellwaters or actually 6 on one line that are supporting 30 chickens or 50 chickens. I'm fixing to put 100 Cornish crosses on 2 bellwaters, which is more than enough. And I'm going to feed it with a 5 gallon bucket. But inside that five gallon bucket, there's a float valve that's hooked to a garden hose. Yeah, I never fill it up. All I do is crack the lid, dump in some apple cider vinegar about once a week, and then let it go for another week. It's really nice. I have that automated. That way when I go out of town, I know I can get somebody to throw some food in, but getting somebody to take a bucket out, fill it up, put it back, refilling all your waters, it's hard to find people to do that, but they'll throw some food in for you. So all my waterings automated. I like it. Yes. Yeah. Oh, it's a game changer. All we got off a little bit on our own little things, but back to the quail. So we're going to be pulling the heat. If you're mean like us, we're going to 10 to 12 days. If you're normal person, pull them at definitely by three weeks. Do not have quail on heat after three weeks, unless you like live in Canada and you're trying to brood them outside or something. Chicken six to eight weeks similar You want to have heat available, but really they shouldn't be using it unless it's like chilly at night after six weeks Turkeys there are a thousand different opinions on how to brew turkeys. Now, I'm obviously, this is our podcast, so I'm going to tell you how I do it, and I do it every year, and I do hundreds a year, and I'm very successful at it. So I'm going to tell you how you do it. First off, you make sure you hatch a couple chicks. to brood with the turkeys. And we're only talking about the first batch for, say, a week. And after that, you're going to start mixing the different batches of turkeys, if you're going to do multiple batches, that is. Say you have some three week olds and some two week olds, put them together. But the reason being is turkeys are lazy. They want that brooder hot and dry. So don't feel like you're overcooking them because they like it. And they are, what happens when you're hot and dry, you want to take a nap. So that's what they want to do. They want to sleep all the time. Whereas the chicks, They're in there going, Woohoo! Let's go run over here! Nope, that piece over there is better. Woohoo! So they get the turkeys up and active.