The 10 mistakes of the first month and how to avoid them

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.

Flocks that start badly all look alike. Following hundreds of starts from NEXTEKCI in Agnibilékrou, you almost always find the same ten mistakes, in the same order: they begin before the chicks arrive, hide in everyday actions and show up too late, on the day 7 scale or in the bucket of dead chicks. This lesson takes them one by one: what is done, why it happens to serious people, what it costs in chicks and in kilos, how it shows on the flock record, and the precise action that avoids it. Read it before the next order, not after.

• ✓Recognise the ten most frequent mistakes of the first 30 days and the moment when each one is made
• ✓Quantify what each mistake costs in chicks lost and in kilos not produced, on a flock of 2,000 white broilers
• ✓Read on the flock record the sign that betrays each mistake before it costs
• ✓Apply the prevention action for each one, at the right moment of the flock calendar

1. Why serious people make these mistakes
2. Mistakes 1 and 2: before the chicks even leave
3. Mistakes 3 and 4: water and access points
4. Mistakes 5 and 6: heat, the guard, the night and the air
5. Mistakes 7 and 8: feed and the scale
6. Mistakes 9 and 10: the record and the telephone
7. Going further

• •The ten mistakes are made mostly before arrival and in the calendar: a date that does not come from the house, heating lit too late, manufacturers' density (8 to 10 per m²) instead of the 5 per m² NEXTEKCI recommends in the hot season.
• •Water first, at room temperature, within a quarter of an hour; 1 drinker for 50 to 80 and 1 tray for 50 chicks; count and divide the day before.
• •Heat lowered by 2 to 3 °C per week, guard widened every day from D3 and removed D7-D10, night rounds until D7, high opening always open, two minutes crouched every evening.
• •Feed transition over 4 days, bags dry on pallets, distributions at dawn and after 5 pm; weighing of 50 to 100 chicks at day 7 compared with four times the arrival weight: a delay at day 7 is almost never made up.
• •The record kept at every round is the tool that reveals the other nine mistakes; the call thresholds are written at the top, today's signal is called in today, and nothing goes into the water without written advice from the veterinarian of the area.