Family Poultry Training Course/Scavenging Chickens Training Handbook - Breeding and Incubation
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Breeding and Incubation
Village chickens normally breed indiscriminately (cocks do not select any one hen) and there is sometimes inbreeding. That is father mating with daughter or sister with brother. The offspring usually do not produce many eggs or grow well.
How can I improve my poultry flock?
- Watch which hens lay well
- Observe those hens that sit and hatch most of their eggs
- Are good mothers
- Care well for the chicks
- Keep those hens that produce strong, healthy chicks
- Mate hens with the fast-growing big cockerels
- Chicks that grow rapidly are usually the males and are best to eat
- Swap cockerels with your neighbour now and again
- This will reduce inbreeding (mating with brother and sister) and
- produce better chicks that will grow fast and lay more eggs
Should I have a breeding program?
If you want to have more eggs to eat and better chickens for meat you should have a simple breeding program. There is great wastage in the present system
- Hens usually lay a clutch of eggs
- Then sit on them; often as many as 15 eggs
- Do not always allow this to happen
- Do not let all broody hens incubate their eggs
- Remove all eggs each day
- When a good mother hen becomes broody put only 6-7 fresh (no more than 8 days old) eggs with sound shells and not misshapen under her
- Have a special nest in an isolated part of the hen house for egg incubation
- Give the broody hen a supply of feed and water close to her nest
Candling eggs
- This allows you to determine if the egg is developing into a chick or not
- A small 3 cm hole is placed in a can or box holding an electric bulb
- A flash light or sunlight entering a dark room can be used
- After about 5 – 8 days thin blood vessels may be seen from a dark red spot and the chick is developing
- If not, eat or discard the egg
What will I do with my broody hen if she has no eggs to incubate?
You must get her back into production as quickly as possible by:
- Isolating her in a small cage with feed and water for 5 days
- Dipping the hen in water 3-4 times a day for 3-4 days as well, is the most effective way of stopping broodiness especially if the hen is isolated
- This means that the hen will return to laying eggs in about 10 days instead of being out of production for about 17 weeks if allowed to incubate and raise her chicks
Next section: Rearing Chicks
