Category: Chickens/Poultry

These two videos document the “Chicken of the Future” contest from 1948, showing what, for the time, were the best chickens and the best practices for raising them (some of which most of us would envy, even today!)

They’re worth watching just for the glimpses they give of good chicken-raising technique, but be careful to take a good hard look at the butchered carcasses! They look just like rubber chickens. And the chickens of 60 years ago grew more slowly, had higher mortality, and were less productive than modern hybrids.

This contest was very well run. Earlier egg-laying contests were easy to game, and the results of the contests had nothing in common with what you’d get if you bought baby chicks from the contestants. They were basically an accidental scam.

For the Chicken of the Future test, they started with a large number of hatching eggs — too many to cherry-pick the ones from the best hens — which were all incubated together. The day-old chicks were brooded in identical pens, then moved into different identical pens after the brooding period. When the cockerels were 12 weeks old, they were all butchered at the same time (with winning pens giving a dressed carcass weighing probably a little more than two pounds!) subjected to USDA inspection and grading, and generally compared with one another.

Feed consumption and overall profitability were kept track of. Profitability was affected by chick mortality, carcass value of the cockerels, rate of lay and size of eggs of the pullets, mortality among the pullets, and feed consumption. Careful records were kept. In the Forties, dual-purpose breeds like New Hampshire Reds usually won in total profitability — so much so that no one seems to have bothered entering any White Leghorns!

Another interesting point was that the contest flocks had outbreaks of disease, which was considered routine at the time. Up until the Twenties, when small farm flocks were the rule, sickness in poultry flocks was uncommon, but it got worse and worse as flock sizes increased, reaching its peak in the Forties and Fifties, in spite of the introduction of antibiotics. Gradually, better biosecurity methods were introduces and the amount of disease plummeted. An outbreak of disease in a contest flock would not be considered routine today.

Brooding baby chicks in cold weather — how low can you go?

As it turns out, cold-weather brooding can go very low indeed. Back in the Fifties, when the electric companies were promoting electric brooding as safer, more reliable, and more convenient that the coal and kerosene brooders that folks used to use, one group did a demonstration:

They suspended four heat lamps in a walk-in freezer at a constant -20 F, and brooded a dozen or so chicks there. It was so cold that ice formed on the waterers on the sides away from the heat lamps, but within the circle of light the chicks were snug and comfy and did just fine.

The rule of thumb for overhead heat-lamp brooders is that one 250-watt heat lamp can handle 75 chicks at 50 F. If temperatures are lower than that, subtract one chick for every degree below 50 F. For example, -20 F is 70 degrees lower than 50 F, so you would be able to brood five chicks (75-70=5) per heat lamp. With four lamps, the freezer demonstration could handle 20 chicks!

Stop for a second and realize how much more confidence you have in all-weather chick brooding, now that you’ve grasped this little-known fact. And that’s just a tiny fraction of the chick-raising lore I’ve collected in my book, Success With Baby Chicks. Don’t forget that we all brood chicks in the late winter or early spring, when it’s still cold! Baby chick season is upon us, so you need to buy the book now, before the chicks arrive.

I always check my youngest chickens first, then work my way up to the oldest ones.

One reason is that baby chicks are more fragile than older birds, so they need to be watched and cared for without fail. As the chickens get older, they need less and less attention, since they’re sturdier and know the ropes. By checking the youngest chickens first, you ensure that they’ll be taken care of before you discover any crises or distractions with the more rugged birds. This helps make sure the youngest chickens don’t get lost in the shuffle.

Then there’s the issue of disease. If you buy only from reputable hatcheries (which I recommend), then the odds of your youngest chickens arriving on the farm with any new diseases are small. This means that it’s not a disaster if you carry material from the brooder house into the henhouse on your boots or gloves. But your older chickens have had the chance to be exposed to various diseases and parasites from wild birds, to the reverse isn’t true. Baby chicks start out with a weak immune system, which gets stronger day by day, so keeping them separated from the older birds really helps. For a while, anyway.

So remember: always take care of your youngest chickens first, and then move on up in reverse order of age.