What to do with chicks after hatching?

Hatching belongs to the key events in the life of every chick. It is also of great importance for the breeder, as it is the culmination of the period of care for incubated eggs. Hatched chickens will determine the strength and abundance of its breeding, so great attention should be paid to appropriate care activities. The process of lowering the eggshell is a titanic effort for every young chicken. If the hatching time will drag out beyond the period of 24 hours, it should be assumed that something is wrong. In this case, these individuals should be removed from breeding, as they will not be a good reproductive material for the next generations. It should be borne in mind that you should not help chicks to hatch.

Care activities after hatching

After hatching, the chicks should be left in incubator for a period of several hours so that they can dry completely. It is also important that young chickens begin to walk on their own and only then can they be pulled out of the device.

Then we subject them to the process of sorting them according to the following criteria:

• a) size (chicken must be well developed)
• b) breed (chicken should be dry, all bright and feathered)
• c) moving (the way the chicken walks, whether it keeps up, limps, falls over - all this can be an incubation defect)
• d) physical structure (the whole body should be checked whether it is free of bleeding or birth defects such as: no eyes, curved beak, more than two legs, clumped fingers, etc.)

The first days of life

Chicks should spend the first days of their lives in the nursery. It can be both a device purchased in a store, and a self-made cardboard additionally insulated with a special material. During the first two days, the optimum temperature for rearing young chickens should be 32^o C. In the next seven days, it should be lowered to 30^° C, and then gradually reduced by 1 degree until 18-20^° C is obtained.

You have to remember about the proper construction of a self-made rearing unit. The source of heat that will warm the chickens should be a light bulb (60-100W), suspended on the wire. By adjusting the length of the cable with the lamp, we affect the temperature prevailing in the rearing unit. Moreover, any apparatus for such a purpose should be equipped with two containers - one for food, the other for water.

After about 3 weeks of rearing, the opinion of a veterinarian should be taken. In addition, to prevent diseases, a small amount of methyl blue, Galinicine preparation (5g per 2l of water) or Adevit can be added to drinking water. In the case of turkeys and chickens, one grain of black pepper with butter may be given to each bird.

Feeding

In the first 24 hours after hatching, the chicks are not given food or water, because they still function on the nutritional values derived from the yolk. Chickens begin to eat normally from the second day of life. The water that we will give to chickens should be fresh and clean and have a temperature of about 20^oC. Attention! You should not feed chickens with shells from their own eggs. There is a risk of getting sick.

The first food they get should consist of:

• hard-boiled egg yolks,
• sweet cheese,
• sour milk,
• 25 - 40% corn and 20 - 25% wheat.

During the first week, the young should receive food which includes:

• powdered cereal mixtures,
• carrots and well-chopped greens (juicy food),
• mineral products rich in calcium,
• yeast.

From the 7th to the 90th day of life, chickens are given:

• green fodder (it should be 25 - 30% of the nutritional ration),
• meal (10 - 12% of the ration, from the 30th day of life),
• ground cereal grains (after 3 weeks),
• corn grains (from the 30th day of life).

The frequency of feeding food depends on the age of the chicks:

• 1-7 days every 2 hours
• 10-40 days every 5-6 times a day
• 40-90 days 4-5 times a day

The care and care that we put in the initial stages of life of young chickens will result in the regularity of development, which will directly affect their future condition.