If your answer is yes, then you can appreciate how it feels to work the farm, but if you’ve not had the opportunity to farm, don’t worry; we have you covered.
In this article, I’m going to introduce you to poultry farming. I’m not going to sound too professional, rather I’ll talk about my personal experience with poultry farming.
This is my first try, and I’m thrilled to share my amateur experience on poultry farming with you. Today, I’ll take you around my new poultry farm that i just completed.
You may like to look at some of the constructions we have in place for our birds which I’ll also try to explain few things concerning poultry house construction.
We started with decisions on the best location for the poultry house, and we looked around and chose desired location inside our farm, and from there, we started clearing the place.
We hired laborers that helped to dig the foundations which our engineers marked for us. After digging the foundation, we blinded the foundation floors with concrete before laying of bricks; that’s the procedure for starting up a solid foundation.
Poultry house doesn’t need high walls because the chickens does well in well ventilated environment; therefore, a feet to 2 feet blocks should be okay for the birds. Let’s take a look at my own bird’s house walls
In my own construction, the wall is a bit higher than average bird house in hot areas of Africa, our decision for making it a bit higher is because of the uniqueness of our environment/farm; our farm is situated closer to a damp area which makes the environment cool and breezy. So we decided to add two additional blocks than how it should be; assuming we’re found on an ordinance and common environment.
From foundation level, we mounted galvanized pipes of 2 inches by 2mm thickness that’ll carry the roof, and we also placed them, spacing them accordingly with the measurements as provided by the carpenter who handles roofing jobs for us.
Wow! Here comes the roofing. Remember that these processes takes lots of time, these has kept us busy since later months in 2022 to this time that we’re about to kick off with our poultry farming. From the picture above, you could see the wood roofing skeleton as they’re being arranged and hanged by our set of carpenters working tirelessly in our farm.
We had some advantages in our landscape because the place is naturally sloppy and we used such opportunity to strategize our structure in same manner which gave us good and speedy flow of water when it rains.
Secondly, our farm land is found on a rocky place which also provides us with solid grounds that doesn’t allow erosion. The only thing that we’re worried about is heavy breeze and typhoon that happens from time to time around here.
Little chicks 🐣 doesn’t or shouldn’t be exposed yo cold, therefore their section should be highly protected and be provided with enough heat that saturates their rooms for brooding. Brooding is the process or the stage of raising baby chickens between a day old to one week in a place protected from cold and by providing them with heating equipment that generates heat for their survival.
It’s only the chicks that needs such exclusive heated environment, but for growers; that’s big chickens, they need ventilation because of their fatty nature. They ordinarily generates heat amongst them, therefore their environment should be ventilated as much as possible. These are all considerations to observe before deciding on the roofing pattern for your poultry house.
In my case, we positioned the bigger chickens where the rooftop started which made those positions very high and leaving the positions with enough open places for ventilation. In the other hand, we positioned the chicks’ house to the lower parts of the building which made the roo to be closer to the birds inside; by this method, the zinc will also help to generate heat during the day, while we manually generate heat for them in the night with either electricity or charcoal pots.
The explanation formed our roofing pattern above.
I’ll further explain how brooding of chickens takes place in my upcoming posts.
Now that the roofing is completed, it’s time to further fortify and protect the building from breeze, from predators and unauthorized entries. We achieved these by further applying extra galvanized pipes, battery cages, nets and tarpaulins around the building. We hired welders and provided them with materials and some of the equipments needed for the job.
Currently we don’t have electricity yet from government provided sources which made our welding work a bit difficult, but being that we’ve provided a gasoline generator for the farm, we gave it out for the welding works that almost two weeks to accomplish.
After properly protected the poultry farm, we casted the floors with concrete and later plastered the walls.
The casting and plastering of the farm was carried carefully to achieve a long lasting structure. Birds like chickens are known for chiseling, pecking and cracking of walls in search of food, sometimes they do such to sharpen their beaks for self defense against their counterparts, therefore, adequate fortification of walls and the ground floor is preferable.
Poultry farm house, especially the floors should be solidified enough because they also get wet all the times from chicken wastes and from other liquids.
Battery cages protects the chickens from human reach and provides segments for individual or groups of chickens. Wire-mesh is also needed to prevent snakes and other crawling predators that may target the birds and ther eggs.
Above are some lists of the materials we provided in making sure that our poultry farm was given enough protection required.
Poultry farming is lovely adventure, I’ve been doing it in very small way until I’m now able to build this farm with support from BCH community, from crypto currencies earned from blogging, and from soft loans taken. This is my first time trying to do poultry farming more bigger than before and it’ll be nice to have you around so that I can share my stories with you. Remember that I focused more on building construction and pattern that I used for my poultry house. None of my suggestions and discussion shall be taken as professional advice; always do further researching, study your own environment before taking decisions. What i share here is my own personal and true life experience.
In my upcoming posts, we may likely talk about other accessories needed for your small poultry farm. My own poultry farm can take up to 2000 birds at a time excluding the chicks at the brooding house. We’ll also talk about their feeds, how you can produce your own rich feed for your birds, we can also look at vaccines you may need in carrying your poultry business.
Now that our poultry house is ready, it’s time to bring in the accessories like feeders and drinkers, sawdusts etc. In non distance time we’ll bring in the birds that’ll inhabit this new haven. Hope you’ll be around to see how it goes.
Thanks for reading carefully, I appreciate your time and attention. I’ll also love to have your comments; questions and advice. Remember that I still need your support to carry on.
