Guinea fowl, ducks, cockerels: what changes, what stays
The families who buy a big coloured chicken from you for Christmas also ask for a guinea fowl for a festive meal, a duck for a New Year's Eve table, or one cockerel per guest for a restaurant. These birds are sold to the same customers, on the same dates, and are managed with the same tools: register, weighing, backward planning, veterinarian of the area. But each has its own requirements for brooding, water, fencing and market. This lesson always starts from day-old young birds bought from a supplier: keets, ducklings or chicks, and says for each what changes and what stays.
14 min read · 5-question quiz at the end
By Abdul Hussein ChoumanFounder of NEXTEKCI · Agnibilékrou hatchery since 2006This lesson is part of Free-range poultry and festive markets specialisation. It opens to every registered student, from free registration. Levels 1 to 5 and the tracks remain readable by everyone.
The families who buy a big coloured chicken from you for Christmas also ask for a guinea fowl for a festive meal, a duck for a New Year's Eve table, or one cockerel per guest for a restaurant. These birds are sold to the same customers, on the same dates, and are managed with the same tools: register, weighing, backward planning, veterinarian of the area. But each has its own requirements for brooding, water, fencing and market. This lesson always starts from day-old young birds bought from a supplier: keets, ducklings or chicks, and says for each what changes and what stays.
- ✓Manage the brooding of a batch of day-old keets and a batch of day-old ducklings, with the differences from the chick
- ✓Adapt the house, the water and the range to the guinea fowl and the duck
- ✓Produce cockerels by early sorting of a coloured flock, and know for whom
- ✓Recognise the traps specific to each species and what never changes
- Why widen the range, and what never changes
- The guinea fowl: fragile for three weeks, sturdy afterwards
- The duck: water for drinking, not for swimming
- The cockerel: sell young, sell fast
- What changes, what stays: the table
- Going further
- •Always day-old young birds bought from a supplier; a single species and a single age group per house and per range; register, weighing, biosecurity, rotation, planning and veterinarian of the area for all.
- •Guinea fowl: 35 to 36 °C and heating for 3 to 4 weeks, dry litter, rounded corners, starter feed richer in protein; flies from 5 to 6 weeks (net); sale at 12 to 16 weeks, 1.2 to 1.8 kg; 4 to 5 per m² in heat.
- •Duck: easy brooding, 32 to 33 °C; deep drinkers outside on a slab, never a pond; thick litter; 3 to 4 per m² in heat; Pekin about 3 kg at 7 to 8 weeks; narrow market, survey first.
- •Cockerel: 4 to 6 weeks, 1 to 1.6 kg, feed conversion ratio of 1.8 at 5 weeks; early sorting of the 200 lightest of a flock of 1,200; sale date set with the restaurateurs at ordering.
- •Densities at the end of the flock in the hot season: coloured chicken 5 to 6 per m² (manufacturers 6 to 8), guinea fowl 4 to 5, duck 3 to 4.