Case study: a flock that starts badly, turning the situation around before day 10

This lesson is part of The day-old chick: the first 30 days specialisation. It opens to every registered student, from free registration. Levels 1 to 5 and the tracks remain readable by everyone.

One Friday morning in March, 2,000 white broiler chicks arrive at a farm near Abengourou. The chicks are good: 41 g, uniform, 8 dead on opening out of 2,000. Three days later, the record counts 46 deaths, 26 of them on the Sunday alone. Nothing is lost yet, but everything is decided in the hours that follow. This lesson goes through this flock from the Friday to the tenth day: the clues, the reasoning with the grids of the previous lessons, the recovery plan written on the Sunday evening, the day-by-day follow-up, and what should have been done before. It is the typical exercise of this specialisation's exam.

• ✓Spot, in a record of the first three days, the clues that say the flock is starting badly
• ✓Reason with the grids for distribution, crop fill, water and mortality to name the causes in order of weight
• ✓Write a recovery plan in ten dated, checkable lines, and follow it through to day 10
• ✓Quantify what the bad start cost, without a single amount of money, and say what should have been done before

1. The situation: good chicks, a house that was not ready
2. The clues, day by day, from Friday to Sunday
3. The reasoning: reading the clues with the grids of lessons 4, 5 and 7
4. The decision on Sunday evening: the recovery plan in ten lines
5. The follow-up, from day 4 to day 10
6. The day 10 summary: quantifying without a single amount, and what should have been done before
7. Going further: the exam and the specialisation certificate

• •A flock that starts badly can be read from the first evening: crop under 80 % at 8 h, less than 32 °C under the brooder, cold feet, huddled chicks; three red readings are worth a plan the same evening.
• •Dead in heaps in the morning = cold; dead at the edges in the afternoon = heat; wrinkled legs and water that does not rise = dehydration; normal droppings = not a disease first, but more than 1 % in one day calls the veterinarian of the area the same day.
• •The recovery plan: ten lines, each with a figure, a time and a means of checking, in the order of the causes; here four brooders, 32 drinkers, water in the shade, curtains at 10 am, night watch, weighing brought forward.
• •Turned around on day 3, the flock gets back to normal mortality on day 6 but keeps a weight delay of 8 to 10 %: 65 chicks and about 285 kg of live chicken lost, without a single amount of money.
• •The chicks were good (41 g, uniform, 0.4 % on opening): you correct what acted (checklist, preheating, brooders, water, night), not what is visible.