Weeks 2 to 4: widening the guard, changing feed phases, ventilating, weighing

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.

On day 7, the flock weighs four times its arrival weight: the start is won. This is when many farmers relax their attention, and yet it is between day 8 and day 28 that the chick becomes a 1.4 kg chicken that multiplies its weight by eight, changes feed twice, goes from 17 m² to 400 m² and begins to give off enough heat and moisture to turn the house into an oven. This lesson gives the programme for the three weeks, the surface and bag calculations, the complete weighing method and the benchmarks that say, every week, whether the flock is holding its curve.

• ✓Apply the programme for weeks 2 to 4: temperature, surface, feed, water, light, equipment
• ✓Calculate the surface to give the flock each week and free the house at the right pace, at the density NEXTEKCI advises in hot weather
• ✓Move from starter to grower feed without a dip in appetite and track the cumulative bags
• ✓Weigh 50 to 100 birds every week, calculate average, uniformity, CV and gap to target, and decide

1. The programme for weeks 2 to 4
2. Widening the guard, then freeing the house
3. Moving from starter feed to grower feed
4. Ventilating: heat, moisture, ammonia, litter
5. Weighing every week: average, uniformity, CV, gap to target
6. Equipment that grows with the chickens, and expected mortality
7. Going further

• •Weeks 2 to 4: 28-30 °C, then 26-28, then 24-26 at night; heat off by day; the flock heats the house after D14 and the work becomes ventilating, from the top before 14 days.
• •Surface for 2,000 white broilers: 67 m² on D7 (30 per m²), 133 m² on D14 (15), 400 m² on D21 (5 per m², NEXTEKCI's advice in hot weather; suppliers 8 to 10 per m² under controlled conditions); curtain moved back every two days, equipment moved the evening before.
• •Starter → grower transition over 4 days in the bucket (75/25, 50/50, 25/75, 100%) around D11-D14; cumulative bags for 2,000: 7 on D7, 24 on D14, 50 on D21, 84 on D28.
• •Weekly weighing: 50 to 100 birds, 3 places, same day and time; D14: 21,000 g ÷ 50 = 420 g, −1.2% to target, 41 out of 50 within 378-462 g = 82%, CV about 9.5%; D21 at 720 g = −15%, serious: causes searched the same day, reweighing at 3 days.
• •Litter dry on the handful test, no ammonia stinging at chicken height, feed in the cool hours; mortality 0.2 to 0.5% a week, 2 to 2.5% cumulative on D28; more than 1% in a day = veterinarian of the area.