Successful poultry operation starts with brooding

HURDLE MILLS, N.C. — Brooding is the foundation for the life of chickens, ducks and turkeys.

“Brooding is the most critical part of your bird’s life,” said Ben Grimes, owner of Dawnbreaker Farms. “If you have a bad brood, you’re going to struggle during the entire life of those birds.”

Poultry producers can go to a local feed mill or farm supply store to purchase chicks or order them from a hatchery.

“My hatchery is in Texas, so going to get the birds is not an option, but if it were an option, I’d do it,” said Grimes during a webinar hosted by the Food Animal Concerns Trust.

Chicks are shipped to Grimes, and when he went to pick up a recent shipment of chicks, the six boxes were outside in a plastic tub at the post office.

“The top boxes were fine, but the bottom boxes had no air flow,” he said. “When we got them home, in the two boxes that were at the bottom, 95 out of 200 chicks were dead and the other four boxes were great.”

Since he started farming in 2013, Grimes has raised and processed around 50,000 birds.

“This year, I’ll raise about 8,000 birds, mostly chickens, about 7,000, and the rest ducks and turkeys,” he said.

Grimes also raises pigs and cattle on his 20-acre farm.

“I love cattle. My heart is with grass-fed beef, but poultry allows me to raise a lot of birds on a small space,” he said.

The farmer sells most of his product wholesale and a lot of his business happens with other farmers who raised beef, pork and vegetables.

“But they don’t want to do poultry so they buy my poultry and sell it to their existing customers,” he said. “I also sell directly to customers at one weekly farmers market and I have a CSA and home delivery program.”

There are many ways farmers can set up brooders, Grimes said, but the two main things are water and how to heat the space.

“Make sure there are no drafts at the birds’ level,” he said. “If you have air flow, you want it up high.”

Grimes uses an old tobacco barn for brooding.

“I’ve retrofitted it with a lot of insulation and it works fine,” he said. “Shipping containers are the gold standard with a forced air ventilation system because you can control the environment.”

Bulb heaters work great to provide warmth for the birds, Grimes said.

“I started with electric heat lamps, but as I scaled up in numbers, it was cumbersome so now I have a propane heater,” he said. “The heater covers the entire area so the whole building is nice and warm.”

Waterers can be on the ground. Grimes has a nipple line in his barn, which is a PVC pipe with nipples.

“It is fantastic and I don’t have to worry about refilling the waterers,” he said.

One thing some producers overlook is adequate watering space for all the birds.

“It’s one thing to have enough water, but you need 3 to 6 inches per chick in the brooder to ensure they drink enough,” Grimes said.

For bedding, farmers can use wood shavings, pine shavings or peat moss for the birds.

“I’ve been using peat moss for four years and I love it because it absorbs moisture really well,” Grimes said. “The goal of your bedding is to create a soft, dry environment for your birds.”

The feed should be designed for the species.

“Don’t be cheap. If you’re buying cheap feed, you’re going to have issues with your birds and they might not grow well so it will cost you money in the future,” Grimes said.

“Start with the best feed you can find locally,” he advised.

“Air flow is critical. Birds can go a day or two without food or water, but they can’t go five minutes without air,” he said. “If you pin your brooder too tight to try to stop drafts and keep the birds warm and you stop air flow, the birds will die.”

With a forced ventilation system, fans kick on when the oxygen level drops to a certain level to bring fresh air in from the outside.

“If you walk into a brooder and smell ammonia, that’s a really bad sign and you need to get air flow in there and more bedding,” Grimes said.

“You want to see the birds happily chirping and running around, not bunching up in one space,” he said. “If the bedding is hard, that’s an indication there’s too many birds in the space.”

A brooder should be a pleasant place for people.

“If it’s not, then the birds don’t want to be there, either,” Grimes said.

“I can tell before I get in the brooder there’s a problem if I hear frantic chirping,” he said. “If they’re piling up, they’re either cold or too hot.”

Corners can also be a problem in a brooder.

“Put something in to block the corners off because if the birds are stressed they’ll run to the corner, pile up on top of each other and kill each other,” Grimes said.

Rats and mice are challenging for those raising birds.

“I deal with them constantly and I use bucket traps,” Grimes said. “I don’t like using poison, but sometimes it can get out of control because you have lots of birds, spilled feed and soft bedding which is perfect attraction for mice.”

For diseases, coccidiosis and ascites are the two things that happen in the brooder that will haunt farmers for the rest of the birds’ lives, the farmer said.

Diarrhea is a sign of coccidiosis.

“That happens when the bedding wasn’t clean, they were drinking dirty water or they were eating feed off the ground,” Grimes said. “The best thing to do is avoid it by making sure the water, feed and bedding are clean.”

If there is a lack of clean, fresh air flow coming into the brooder, the birds may not die immediately, but two to three weeks later get ascites.

“It takes time for ascites to develop so the birds will die at six weeks old,” Grimes said. “Great air flow is just as critical as water and feed.”