Chickens are not vegetarians as some poultry producers would have us believe – grain fed – whats up with that? Corn fed? – the healthiest chickens eat what they like and their diet is varied – and eggs from a free range chickens are better for you because of it. A diet of fresh veggies and whatever bugs they can find in their free range field makes for healthy happy chickens.

 Do chickens eat spinach? – sure they do – and almost anything else – lizards, mice, snakes, bugs – and just about any vegetable you can think off. Don’t give them Avocado pear or potato peels. If you are going to give them egg shells (and you can) just crush them first – especially if they are layers – otherwise they will learn to eat eggs – and that is not a good idea.

If your chickens are free range or organic chickens they will look after themselves. We are on a large plot – we spend a lot of time cutting grass – so I gather it all up and throw it into the chicken runs – they love to scratch and forage amongst it. Growing wild in the grass are all sorts of weeds and wild African spinnach – magou – they cannot get enough of it. It also gives them something to do – a bored chicken is not a happy chicken – they love to forage – and if their chicken coop is too small they will soon turn it into a dust bowl. Your foraging area needs to be changed regularly – if you have a free range chicken house then open one side to a field and let them scratch that side for a month or so and then change to the other side of the chicken house – this will give the vegetation time to regrow – and it is all food – which saves you money. You will probably have to suppliment their diet with chicken feed – unless they a=have got a really large chicken coop – which is often not practical.

You can give you home chickens food scraps from the table – bones, meat, corn, pap – if you eat it they will eat it. Do not give them citrus though - it just upsets their stomachs – other fruits are fine – just not too much.

What I have also started doing is keeping the grass cuttings of the lawn grass – I dry it out in a shed and use it instead of shavings – easy and cheap – and it makes great compost once the litter is dirty.

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Chicken processing machines are used by slaughter houses to process chickens into sellable cuts and portions. A poultry processing machine will kill, de-feather, and debone your chicken. It will also cut the chicken into salable portions. A slaughter house should not be on the same property as a broiler house or chicken layer house. The chance of disease is too great – not to mention the fact that the smell will cause much distress to your live birds, which will in turn affect your production figures.

If you are doing broilers on your farm – or layers, you do not really want to start processing chicken meat on the same premises – not matter how fancy your processing equipment is. The chances of disease crossing over to your chicken house is just too great. Even small farms who take small batches of broilers across to slaughter houses have problems when they are miles apart. In rural areas you will often find that the chicken farmer is also doing the slaughtering – and without any fancy equipment – they slaughter by hand and pluck by hand. They then pack and clean in the same room – not great – but that is how it goes in poorer rural areas. All of this is totally unmonitored – I doubt any official will have ever visited the facility to check on health issues and cleanliness issues. While on a small scale this may not result in any problems it is still a concern for the community – they of course know nothing about the condition of the poultry processing plant – if you could call it that. The chicken farmer will say nothing – both operations belong to the farmer. What the farmer does not realise is that he or she is not doing them selves any favours – the chances of either his broilers getting sick – or of contamination to his chicken meat, are very high – and after a few months of slaughtering any facility without stainless steel counters and concrete floors is going to become a real bacteria farm. With no record keeping – manuel or computerised, tracing the supply chain just is not going to happen. Poultry software is not something the farmer even knows about – how can the farmer even think about software when they do not have electricity to even run a computer.

The chicken farmer would do much better to allow a proper facility with poultry processing machines and chicken processing machines do the job -  slaughter equipment is expensive though – and in the backwaters of South Africa money is scarce – the volumes required to make a god profit on a slaughter house are just to high to set up such a business – with the result being that the farmer must do the job themselves. Transporting the flock that is ready for slaughter a few hundred kilometers is just not an option – and naturally there is the return trip with the processed chicken. Government will do well to supply grants for processing equipment and slaughter houses – especially as they cannot monitor what happens in rural areas – they cannot even monitor what goes on in large processing plants in larger cities and towns. WIth the challenges of no running water, no rubbish collecting services, no electricity at all in most rural areas it is no wonder that enterprising farmers are handling the whole supply chain – from growing the chickens, slaughtering and packing the chicken meat and then selling directly to the public. While this is a fact of farming in rural areas it does not remove the threat to the customers – no testing or refrigeration through these processes means that at some stage or another someone is going to get sick – and when they do there is going to be very little done in finding the source of the illness – if indeed it is at all possible to trace the food and the supplier – most of the packaging is done without branding and all of it is done without sell by dates and other legal information that should be on all packaging.

Layer house from Chicken Shack

Layer Houses for egg production

A layer house is a chicken house specifically designed to raise hens for egg production. Small chicken farmers would use small poultry units – usually a steel structure, that is designed as a layer house.

Poultry units can be layer houses or broiler houses – they are both, at the end of the day chicken houses, but with some key differences.

Layer houses

A layer house will be higher, to accommodate 2 tier layer cages or nest boxes. The height is important because the chickens must not be too close to the roof.

A layer house will also have much larger poultry curtain openings for better ventilation. The curtain openings will also wind down with a winch very close to the ground - allowing air to circulate over the litter that collects under the nest boxes or chicken layer cages.

The layer cages will have a nipple drinking system and will have a trough at the front to feed the hens. There will be no bell drinkers or tube feeders, but there must be a water tank on the roof for water supply. A layer house for chickens will also be wider than a standard broiler house so that one can easily move around the layer cages to collect eggs – with an egg trolley. Poultry units are made and erected in South Africa

Rain does not harm the chickens initially – but when the sun comes out the birds move into the shade. Chickens do not like sun on their comb. If it is rainy season the chickens do not ever dry out properly – and this can be a problem. When you do put the wet chickens in the poultry house they begin to steam – and this is where respiratory problems start. The best thing to do is to herd your chickens back under cover when it begins to rain – especially when you are having rain every day. With day old chicks you must make sure that they do not get wet – the chick down will only keep a limited amount of water out – and with a slight wind the baby chicks will die. If you day old chicks have arrived in cardboard chick boxes - get them inside as soon as possible if it is raining. Make sure they are under the gas heater if they have got wet.

M8 gas brooder - top class heater!

When your chicks arrive for placement they will come in cardboard chick crates or plastic chick crates. The day old chicks will need to be placed in a pre-warmed poultry house – and that means that you have been heating the chicken house for the last 24 hours. The shavings must be at the right temperature. The baby chicks will most likely be dehydrated – and you will need to give them water first. Once the are happily under your gas heater, and they have taken on water you can give them food.

Plastic chick tray

Baby chickens learn to eat from mommy hen – and now that they have come into the world without mommy hen you are going to have to take on that role. If they are not drinking then you need to show them where the water is and get a drop or 2 down their throats – you will only need to show a couple of baby chicks and the rest will copy. Your chick founts or bell drinkers should be right on the floor so that the chickens can reach.

Now for food – before your chicks arrived you should have enclosed a small area at one end of the chicken house with a gas brooder or electric radiant heater above. Place some news paper on top of the shavings and spread a handful of chick feed on the news paper. When you want the chicks to eat – scratch and rustle the pellets on the news paper – chicks are very inquisitive and will come and see what the noise is about. They will scratch and begin to eat.

For the first week at least the baby chickens should be eating from chick trays – not from tube feeders or chain feeders. So – if you are moaning “my chicks won’t eat” – you now know how to spark them - there are other reasons like health etc. – but the main reason on day one – they need water before they can eat – and that they do not know how. Cardboard chick boxes and chicken crates are available on request – minimum order of 300 units. The cardboard chicken crate has 4 divisions inside to keep the chick from suffocating each other.

Layer house in Brits

The reason for the larger curtains and side wall spaces is that these chickens or hens will live a long time in the house, and will only be placed when they are at point of lay (about 18 weeks). They will live in the structure for about sixty weeks before they start to lay less and less eggs – after that they will be sold for their meat – “hard chicken’ as meat from older chickens are known as is well liked by the local population in South Africa. The layers will be crowded into layer cages and will need all the air and cooling they can get. In hot climates you will also need poultry fans to help with ventilation. Different types of chicken houses and poultry equipment depending on the types of chicken farming you are doing.

This layer house has a front porch and fancy cooling sliding door. The door of the poultry house allows the farmer the choice of completely closed or open with covered mesh – this is fantastic for hot regions as the airflow through the door helps tremendously with the cooling of the structure – cross ventilation fans that can be moved or swiveled in any direction help with the overall air flow.

Layer cages being installed

The chicken house is insulated with sisalation and has lights installed on a timing system. An electrician will need to be contracted to do the wiring. Lights are very important when raising chickens – whether they are broiler chickens or layer chickens – even broiler/breeder farms make use of lights. Keeping the lights on at certain times will increase the amount of eggs your chickens lay, and will cause broilers to eat more – thereby increasing growth rate. Care needs to be taken with lights and broilers as you do not want your chicken to grow more quickly than the strength in it’s legs. It is a 30m x 7m poultry house and has layer cages inside. It was custom built on the site in Brits and is part a project that will finally have 4 houses, silos, a cross auger system to carry chicken food and a gantry that holds a mono rail to move the eggs to the sorting house. An egg grading machine is planned. (this egg grader will weigh and grade the eggs – fancier machines even wash the eggs, and then the chicken eggs will be packed into cartons or egg boxes. The steel structure took 14 continuous days to build working from 5am – 6pm, weekends included. It is a real beauty and was built on the concrete slab that was laid by the chicken farmer.Laying your own slab can save you a lot of money – it should be re-enforced with steel wire reinforcing, and be at least 150mm thick. The slab should be at least one meter bigger all the way around, than the actual footprint of the steel structure – this allows the rain coming of the roof to land on concrete and not wash the ground away. A plastic groundsheet can be used in place of a concrete slab – a lot cheaper, but not ideal. Although, in a layer house, it is definitely a cost saving option.

It has poultry fans, and lights, water tank, chicken curtains, and layer cages. This is a great example of how a poultry house should be built – the chicken house was built by Chicken Shack Agencies and is the largest Yellow Door House built. It sets the standard for small poultry houses and is probably the best example in South Africa. The layer cages are installed with nipple drinkers and the cages can hold up to 7 chickens at a push. The chicken farm is located in Brits and a map to the farm can be found at Yellow Door Poultry Houses.

Types of chicken farming fall into 3 broad categories. These methods of poultry farming are used in intensive chicken farming, free range chicken farming and organic chicken farming. All types of poultry farming use similar methods and practises. The poultry equipment used for each type is , in some case exactly the same , and in other cases very different. The types of poultry, or breeds of chickens vary but methodology remains the same.

Broiler Farming

Broiler chicken farming is the farming of poultry for slaughter. The chickens are raised as eating chickens. The time it takes to grow a broiler chicken ranges from 4 weeks (intensive chicken farming) to 12 weeks (organic chicken farming). The time it takes to grow a chicken will depend on the feed and the conditions of the poultry house. Time is sometimes regulated, as in organic chicken farming, you may not slaughter before 12 weeks. In a chicken house where intensive methods are used, up to 15 chickens per square meter are placed.

Layer Chicken Farming

Raising layer chickens, or laying hens, is done for the purpose of eggs. These eggs are eating eggs and are sold as such. In intensive layer farming, hens are usually kept in layer cages, up to 5 hens per bay. The hens will lay for about 2 years and then be sent for slaughter. Egg production is anything from 5 eggs per week per hen – up to an egg a day per hen. In free range poultry farming  and organic egg production, the hens will lay the eggs in a nest box, and will have access to the outside environment. Special organic feeds are required, and certain regulations apply. Egg production does not suffer as a result of free range chicken farming or organic chicken farming.  Intensive poultry faring for eggs is also known as battery farming, cage farming and battery cage farming.

Breeder broilers chicken farming

This type of farming is very similar to egg production. In intensive poultry farming the hens live in a house with cockerels and lay eggs in nest boxes. The eggs will have been fertilised and are collected daily. They are then taken to a hatchery where they will be hatched out as baby chicks and sold as day old chicks to farmers who are involved in broiler chickens.

Depending what types of chicken farming you are doing, you will need specific poultry equipment. The methods of poultry farming, will determine the specific poultry equipment – and the  types of poultry farming will be regulated by the country you are farming in. You will use the types of poultry and breeds of chickens that are most suited to your environment and specific kind of chicken farming.

GAs Brooder

By far the best option is a gas brooder where you can get instant heat and control your supply of power – not relying on expensive, erratic electricity. Gas heaters are sold in South Africa by Chicken Shack Agencies. – www.chickenshack.co.za – poultry houses, broiler houses and layer houses. What equipment do you need in a chicken house?

Before you place your chicks in the poultry house you should pre heat the house with your gas brooder. The gas heaters will take a few hours to warm the shavings – once the shavings are warm you can place you chicks under the poultry heater.

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G12 Gas Brooder

You have total control and instant heat. Heatcos that run on coal are not as cheap as everyone thinks – and you are still dependant on electricity to distribute heat with a fan – not an option if you are serious about heating your day old chicks.

South Africa can get bitterly cold in many places – broilers and young chickens need to be warmed – Layer houses, broiler houses and breeder houses all need heat – and the gas brooder from Chicken Shack Agencies, made by Gasolec is one of the best gas brooders in the world. So good in fact that the great design is now being copied (not very well though). Radiant heat is the answer – and gas heaters give you total control – with a built in thermostat you can set the heater to turn on and off as the temperature changes.

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To candle an egg is very simple – shine a very bright LCD torch or lamp under the chicken egg – best done in an darkened room. Hold the egg big side down and at about a 45 degree angle – and rotate it slowly looking for signs like blood spots, eggshell quality and fertilisation. Egg candling is practised by chicken farms that are selling eggs to the public and by poultry farmers who need to see how well their fertised eggs are doing. How to candle an egg? What is egg candling?,