Breeding

Extract

Raising Chicks in Batteries by W. C. Thompson, New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, New Brunswick, N. J. The Harper Adams Utility Poultry Journal, 1929, p. 307.

To summarize concerning battery rearing is to say that:

1. 1. A room approximately 12ft. by 14ft. in size will accommodate a battery large enough to handle nearly two thousand chicks, an economy in housing provision for chick rearing.

2. 2. One man can satisfactorily take care of from four to five times as many chicks by battery methods as by former methods.

3. 3. The chicks are surrounded by strictest possible sanitation, and B.W.D. and coccidiosis have little chance to kill chicks.

4. 4. The chicks have nothing else to do but eat and grow, and yet they get sufficient exercise to enable them to make proper growth.

5. 5. The scheme is especially convenient for the handling of chicks during their first four weeks, until the worst danger period is passed, and is a splendid answer to the handling of surplus male chicks.

6. 6. The pullets are well started in the batteries and are finished under normal conditions.

7. 7. The batteries must be kept fairly darkened, to keep down any tendency to toe...picking, etc.