Due to improper conditions of detention, including in the absence of the necessary microclimate in the chicken coop, significant losses of young animals occur. This problem is especially relevant when growing broilers, when for fast weight gain birds are kept in conditions of limited mobility and therefore have weaker immunity than other breeds of chickens. About what temperature is needed for the productive breeding of domestic broiler chickens will be discussed in this review.

Why should you control the temperature in the chicken coop?

Broilers are considered meat chickens from six months to 9 weeks of life, ducklings up to 8 weeks, chicks of geese and guinea fowls up to 3 months and turkeys not older than 19 weeks. The average weight of a broiler chicken is 1.5–2 kg.

Growing broiler chickens has a fundamental difference from the content of any other poultry. It consists in the fact that the farmer does not need to take care of the good health and immunity of young animals in the long term “for several years ahead,” but it is only necessary that the chicks quickly gain weight during the first few weeks of their life.

Such a task dictates its own conditions and the main one is to prevent a situation in which the bird freezes. It is intense heat that allows chickens to quickly gain weight, and for broilers, this temperature should be slightly higher than for young eggs, which need to learn how to spend energy on their own heating.

However, superheated air in the house prevents the development of chickens. Choking from the heat, the birds weaken, their bodies become dehydrated, because of which the young growth is inactive, lies motionless and refuses food. The result is the same as under hypothermia: lack of weight gain, stunted growth, illness, and the threat of death.

Did you know? In 2016, the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published the results of an experiment. It turns out that modern broilers gain weight twice as fast as the same breeds grown in the 1970s, and compared to the “sixties” and “Pentecostals” this difference is three-fold and four-fold.

Another reason why the temperature regime during broiler growing is of the utmost importance is that such chickens are usually kept in incubators, that is, without the participation of a brood hen warming the chicks with the heat of their own body. Thus, under artificial conditions, the development and survival of young animals depends entirely on whether the farmer can create a temperature regime suitable for chickens in the house.

Optimal conditions for rearing birds

In addition to the temperature regime, it is necessary to take into account other indicators, in particular, air humidity, light intensity, ventilation mode. In special sources you can find these data, painted for chicks of different ages literally by day. It is important for a novice farmer to follow such recommendations, as the needs of young animals from the moment of birth to the expected date of slaughter change.

Young growth

In the early days of life, broiler chicks are especially in need of warmth.

The optimal temperature in the room for different types of farm birds immediately after birth is given in the table:

However, from the sixth day of life, the processes of thermoregulation in the body of young animals are started, and the dependence of the chicks on external heating decreases.

Important! To achieve such indicators, the air should be 4–7 degrees higher over the entire area of ​​the house near the heating pad.

For this reason, the temperature in the house can and should begin to be gradually lowered - about one degree per week.

So, for chickens, this adjustment looks something like this:

In the autumn-winter period, to create such temperature conditions in the room where the chickens are kept, a heater must work.

As for air humidity, in the first six days of the life of the chicks, this indicator should be in the range of 40-60% (the lower indicator is preferable for winter, the upper one is for the warmer months), then the more humid air should gradually replace dry air, up to 70 %

The humidity in the room should not be confused with the condition of the litter, which should always remain dry. According to existing standards, the maximum allowable rate of moisture can not exceed 25%.

Another important condition when growing broilers is proper lighting. The first 10-14 days of the life of the chickens should be in the light 24 hours a day, but the lamps should not be too bright (it is optimal to illuminate the house with green or red light). Then the daylight hours are gradually reduced, bringing this indicator to 16 hours a day.

The bird shows rapid weight gain in cases when the room where it is located is lit 20–23 hours a day, so 16-hour daylight hours are the minimum acceptable condition caused by the desire to reduce production costs at the cost of some loss in productivity.

Important! Without exception, all lamps, even the most modern, produce heat in addition to light. This must be taken into account when installing lighting in the house to prevent overheating in the room.

In addition, the vision of chickens is not able to perceive light in the blue and violet spectrum, so this kind of coloring of the lamp is not suitable for the chicken coop: chickens will feel in the dark, and the farmer will bear the useless costs of paying for electricity.

The same applies to infrared lighting, which can be used for heating, but is not perceived as a light source by birds. Do not use fluorescent lamps in the house: chicken eyes perceive their work in a flicker mode, which is bad for the mental state of the bird and interferes with weight gain.

Adult birds

Starting from the second month of the life of the chicks and until they reach the age of technical maturity, the temperature in the room where the young is kept can be reduced to + 11 ... + 19 ° C, which means that there is no longer any need for special heating of the house during this period.

Requirements for air humidity and lighting mode remain the same.

In addition to the above conditions, for the development of broilers, it remains important to observe the ventilation mode in the house, which is unchanged throughout the life of chickens. The air in the chicken coop should not stagnate, this is fraught with the development of pathogenic microflora, but at the same time it is impossible to prevent drafts in the room, which can cause large losses, up to the loss of the entire population.

How to make heating for the chicken coop?

If broiler chickens are not kept outdoors, but indoors, the farmer needs to think in advance how it will be heated. To reduce heat transfer costs, the house should be insulated.

1. Choose the right place for the chicken coop. It is good if the house will be protected from strong gusts of cold wind (for example, be located as an extension to other utility rooms on the north side), but at the same time remain open to sunlight.
2. Use in construction materials with good thermal insulation.
3. Carefully seal the slots to maintain a stable temperature indoors.
4. Sheathe walls, doors and ceilings in the house with a thick layer of polystyrene or mineral wool.
5. To provide large windows in the chicken coop, which will become not only a source of natural light, but also provide its additional heating.
6. Use warm natural materials (ideally wood) as a flooring, providing an air gap between such a coating and a concrete floor, for example, laying boards on wooden beams.
7. In the cold season, use a thicker layer of sawdust, hay, straw or peat in the house, changing it only partially. In this case, the processes of decay (composting) taking place in the organic matter will become a source of additional heat.

Among the heating appliances that provide a suitable temperature for keeping broilers in the first weeks of their life, experts call:

1. Infrared lamps. They do not heat the air, but directly located objects in the room, which can significantly save costs, prevent a decrease in humidity in the room, but at the same time additionally dry the litter. In addition, infrared lighting, as already mentioned, does not irritate the bird's visual organs.
2. Infrared heaters. They have the same advantages as lamps, in addition, they allow the use of special temperature controllers that automate the process of creating the necessary microclimate in the house.
3. Stoves. They can be considered as a solution to the problem of heating small houses, but they are inferior to modern versions by the impossibility of achieving accurate temperature parameters, which is acceptable in a regular chicken coop, but is practically not suitable for growing broilers. An additional drawback is the high probability of a fire due to the presence of a dense litter of flammable material, which the bird constantly moves from place to place in close proximity to an open fire.
4. Electric heaters. The option is effective, but costly to operate, and, in addition, fire hazardous. Another problem is the need for additional protection of the wires to prevent them from biting.
5. Heat fans. They have the same disadvantages as electric heaters.
6. Steam boilers. Maintenance costs are cheaper than electric heaters, but their initial cost is high, in addition, the equipment is difficult to install and requires qualified maintenance.

Features of growing broilers on a deep litter

Modern poultry farming involves three possible options for growing broilers:

1. In the cells.
2. On the floor using a deep, constant litter.
3. On a mesh floor with deep litter.

Despite the fact that each of these methods has advantages and disadvantages, the second option is the most common.

Important! Cellular bird keeping in many countries, especially in those where organic livestock is gaining popularity, is considered inhumane and therefore unacceptable.

The peculiarity of the method is that birds of the same age are collected in one room. The total time of their cultivation is a little less than 1.5 months (up to 44 days), and during this period the litter never changes. As a material for such litter, wood chips or sawdust, as well as crushed dry straw, are used.

The requirements for broiler housing conditions for this system are as follows:

• local heating - using an infrared heater or brooder;
• number of heating appliances - 1 per 500-700 goals;
• optimal house sizes - 18 × 96 m;
• light intensity - 25 lumens for 24 hours to 21 days of life and 14 hours for the subsequent period;
• way of lighting - fluorescent lamps or incandescent lamps;
• ventilation per 1 kg of live weight - not less than 0.7 m³ per hour;
• type of feeding - dry;
• feeders - a baking sheet during the first days of life, then a gutter;
• minimum drinking water temperature - + 18 ° C.

Did you know? Intensive nutrition is unhealthy for chickens. So, scientists have proved that with an average life expectancy of 13 years, a single 30-day fasting can increase this period to 18 years, that is, by almost 40%.

When using a combined floor (deep litter on a grid), nets with a cell frequency of 1.6 × 1.6 cm and a rod thickness of 0.3–0.4 mm are used. This method due to higher hygiene (part of the stool does not stay in the litter and falls on a special tray) allows you to increase the density of the birds in the room up to 25 animals per 1 m² or more.

Under such conditions, it is important to organize a stable temperature over the entire area of ​​the house, since a large accumulation of chickens does not allow them to be placed in close proximity to the heat source. The rest of the growing parameters, including its total duration, on mesh and monolithic floors are the same.

Rules for keeping brood in the fresh air

Despite the fact that weak immunity and high requirements for the microclimate preclude the continuous cultivation of broilers in the fresh air, walking to such chickens is useful. Not all farmers comply with this requirement, but those who do not neglect them receive the best meat gain from young animals.

General requirements for the organization of walking broiler chickens:

With the proper organization of walks and the gradual accustoming of chickens to fresh air when they reach the age of 6–7 weeks, they can be transferred to keeping in open enclosures. This will allow the farmer to reduce the cost of feeding the feathered herd, because a significant part of the food the birds can get for themselves.

To make this task even easier, many experts recommend equipping mobile enclosures, because chickens in a short period of time are able to turn the place of walking into the territory of “scorched earth”, where there is not a single blade of grass and not a single insect.

An additional advantage of keeping the bird in the fresh air is that under such conditions it receives more sunlight and oxygen, which positively affects not only its health, but also its appetite, and for broilers the last argument is critically important. It is only necessary to ensure that the place for walks is cleaned of garbage and protected from peddlers of dangerous infections (rodents, predators, pigeons and other wild birds).

Did you know? An original and cheap way to prepare a site for a classic English lawn is to pre-place on it a place for walking chickens. The next year after that, you can safely sow expensive grass on the liberated land, no weeds are no longer afraid of it.

The broiler cultivation can rightly be called a separate industry in poultry farming. Early ripening meat chickens can be obtained only if during the short life span of the birds the conditions are created that allow them to quickly gain weight. One of the most important parameters is the correct air temperature, the indicators of which are directly dependent on the age of the chickens, and at the same time they must be strictly and impeccably observed.