If you raise chickens, you get some dirty eggs. Is egg washing okay, and, if so, how? And how can you minimize the number of dirty eggs? Read on! I’ll cover the basic egg cleaning concepts, how to wash eggs by hand, and what you need to know about both homemade and commercial egg washing machines.

1. Is it okay to wash eggs?

It’s okay by me! Some jurisdictions have laws forbidding you to wash any eggs that you’re going to sell. Some have laws requiring that you wash any eggs you’re going to sell. I’ll go into that further on.

But face it, some eggs you collect from your flock will be too dirty to use unless you wash them first. You can always throw them away (and with the very worst ones, that’s often your best bet), but you’ll have plenty of eggs that are too dirty to use but not dirty enough to throw away.

2. Wait, aren’t eggs protected by a mystical-magical “bloom” that is removed by washing?

The “bloom” (or “cuticle”) is a mucous film on the outside of the eggshell. It’s nothing to get excited about, even if you’re into mucous.

But yes, it’s true that washing removes this slime layer. But the only real-world significance of the bloom is that washed eggs lose moisture a little faster than unwashed eggs. Producers used to put a very light spray of mineral oil on the eggs to reduce evaporation. As far as I can tell, no one can tell the difference if they keep their eggs in the refrigerator, and maybe not if they keep their eggs on the shelf.

Once, as an experiment, I kept some washed and unwashed eggs in my basement, unrefrigerated, for six weeks. I couldn’t tell the two groups apart. Both had declined to Grade B quality (runny whites, fragile yolks) but were still edible.

3. How do I wash dirty eggs?

There are only a few points you need to remember when cleaning eggs:

• The “dirt” on dirty eggs is usually manure. Thus, a dirty egg is likely to drop flakes of manure into your frying pan. I like my food natural, but not that natural. The outside of such an egg is obviously swarming with bacteria. A dirty egg will thus go bad faster than an egg that was never dirty.
• If the washing process draws live bacteria into the interior of the eggs, the eggs go bad as quickly as unwashed dirty eggs, and maybe faster.
• If the washing process keeps the bacteria on the surface, or kills them, or both, the washed eggs go bad as slowly as eggs that were never dirty, or even slower.
• When using cold water as part of the process, the cold water chills the egg and the egg’s contents contract. To fill this space, air, water, or dirt are sucked into the egg through the pores in the shell.
• But if the water is warmer than the egg, it causes the contents of the egg to expand, and air, water, or dirt are pushed out of the pores of the egg and into the wash water.

The take-aways are:

• Always wash eggs in water that’s significantly warmer than the eggs.
• Sanitize the eggshells to kill any bacteria on the shell. I rinse with diluted bleach. Some people prefer quaternary ammonia or even very hot water.

4. How should I wash eggs by hand?

Buying a commercial egg washer isn’t to everyone’s taste (or budget), so here’s an egg-washing technique that ought to be acceptable everywhere in the US, even by the strict USDA standards:

1. Clean your work area before starting, and have a trash container for paper towels and broken eggs, and make sure you have a sink nearby that’s not full of eggs, so you can wash your hands when they get dirty, which they will.

   

2. Get one or more large plastic watering cans.
3. Fill a watering can with water at about 100 °F (35 C), a little unscented detergent (you can buy “egg wash powder” or use unscented commercial dishwasher detergent), and enough bleach to bring the free chlorine to 100-200 ppm.  Chlorine test strips can be bought at any wholesale grocery or restaurant supply store.

   

4. With your dirty eggs in wire egg baskets or plastic washer flats, water them generously with the watering can. Allow the water to go down the drain. Letting the eggs stand in water violates USDA rules (though this may not apply to you), and tends to give rise to the same problems seen in immersion washers, as discussed later on.
5. Let them sit for a couple of minutes. If the eggs are particularly disgusting, you might want to wet them again after a couple of minutes.
6. Take the eggs one at a time and wipe them with a paper towel. If the eggs are too dry to wipe clean, pour some of your unused wash water onto a clean paper towel. You can dip a brand-new towel in the water, but once the towel has touched and egg, don’t dip it again; we want to keep the water clean. Discard the towels as they become dirty. Cloth towels are against everyone’s rules because people keep using them after they’re dirty. Put the cleaned eggs into another wire basket or washer flat. You may want to have a separate area for stubborn eggs that need to be sprayed and rubbed again.
7. Next comes a sanitizing spray. A watering can with 100 ºF water and bleach at 100-200 ppm is good.  Don’t stint; use plenty of water. This gets them cleaner, and the bleach helps make the stains go away.
8. Dry the eggs in some responsible manner. They’ll stick to the cartons if you box them while wet. Some people dry them on racks, using ½ in. hardware cloth on a wooden frame, or lay them out on a clean towel. Putting the eggs directly in the refrigerator, still in their baskets or washer flats, is the simplest method.  The refrigerator will cool and dry them at the same time. Don’t be alarmed if some parts of the egg seem darker than others; the parts of the egg that are in contact with a flat or another egg will dry more slowly than the the exposed portions, and will look darker. This will vanish when the egg is completely dry.
9. Once the eggs are dry, pack them into egg cartons or flats.

5. Can I avoid using a chemical sanitizer?

The simplest method of egg washing is as follows, and it’s also sanitizer-free:

• Fill a metal bucket with 160 °F (70 C) water and the detergent of your choice (it should be food-grade, non-sudsing, and unscented. I like commercial dishwasher detergent.) This water is hot enough to badly scald you, so be careful.
• Slowly pour the water over a basket full of eggs, allowing the water to go down the drain.
• Don’t let the eggs stand in the water or they’ll cook (not to mention that allowing eggs to stand in water violates the rules of the USDA and many states).

That’s it. The water is hot enough to sanitize the eggshells without added chemicals. This method doesn’t work as well as one where the eggs are wiped, such as in the Aquamagic (using rotating brushes) or the watering-can technique (wiping by hand with paper towels), but it ought to be okay on eggs that are only lightly soiled. It’s certainly simple, provided you have an adequate supply of very hot water.

CAUTION: 160 °F water is hot enough to scald you, and splashing yourself is not an experience you’ll forget in a hurry.

6. What kinds of egg washers exist?

There are all kinds of commercial egg-cleaning machines, some quite enormous, washing eggs on an industrial scale. Other egg washers are quite small. And you can build your own small egg washer without much difficulty.

For wet-process egg cleaning, we can divide the field into immersion washers and spray washers. Immersion washers are cheap. Spray washers are better, but more expensive: they handle a lot more eggs per hour and get the eggs  cleaner. There’s also  dry egg cleaning, using something like sandpaper, which I’ll discuss later on.

I use an 1960s-era Aquamagic egg washer, shown below. Versions of this machine are still being manufactured, now called Sani-Touch. See my Aquamagic page for videos and more information.

I recommend that you start small in the egg business, which probably means that you should start with an immersion washer, or hand washing, or dry washing. Don’t go investing your retirement savings in a fancy washer yet.

Egg washing is a mature technology. The issues have been understood since the Thirties. However, early egg-washing machinery ran afoul of human nature. The old immersion-style washers worked superbly when run according to the instructions, especially if the water was dumped and replaced between each basket of eggs. But human nature is such that people can’t resist running “just one more basket” through the washer. Sanitizers are ineffective when used in dirty water, and eggs sanitized in dirty water spoil quickly.

This sort of thing has given egg-washing a bad reputation, even though egg washers that have none of these problems have been available for over fifty years, and proper egg-washing techniques have been well-known for over eighty years.

In the US, USDA-inspected eggs must be washed. In the EU, washing commercial eggs is forbidden. Go figure.

7. What should I know about immersion-type egg washers?

What’s an immersion egg washer? In its simplest form, an immersion washer is pretty much a bucket of warm soapy water that you lower a basket of eggs into, plus some means of agitating the water, such as by twirling the basket or sloshing it gently up and down by hand.

A standard five-gallon galvanized bucket is slightly larger than a standard egg basket, so you can give this a try at almost no expense.

This actually works pretty well, and you should think twice before doing anything much more expensive and elaborate.

The next step in terms of fanciness is to add some kind of agitation to replace the hand-sloshing step. This often takes the form of a perforated tube at the bottom of the bucket, hooked up to an air compressor. The bubbles keep everything moving, as shown in this video:

Fancier immersion washers don’t really work any better than this, but they can cost over $1,500. I once owned a Kuhl immersion washer like the one pictured here. I didn’t like it. I found it much harder to use than the “bucket and bubbler” method, and it was about 50 times more expensive.

Some immersion washers have water heating elements, but I think this is a problem, not a feature. If you have more than a few dozen eggs to wash, you can’t wait for the water to heat up in the bucket: you need to dump the dirty water and replace it with water that’s already hot. Time is money. And an ordinary household water heater is perfect for this job, so where’s the problem? But without plenty of hot water, you’ll be reluctant to dump the bucket as soon as you should, and your eggs will go bad in your customers’ refrigerators.

The USDA does not allow immersion washers for eggs under their inspection. Last time I checked, different states had different rules for non-USDA-inspected producers. My State, Oregon, does not allow the use of immersion washers under any circumstances.

Where immersion washing is allowed, do yourself a favor and add a final sanitizing step, where you spray a sanitizing solution over the eggs after you pull the egg basket out of the wash water. A large plastic watering can with hot water and chlorine at 100-200 ppm works fine for this. Sprinkle liberal amounts over the eggs in the basket.

Of course, immersion washers leave the eggs wet. Don’t pack them into cartons until they’re dry, or they’ll stick. But immersion washing leaves the eggs quite warm, and they’ll dry pretty quickly, even in the basket, but with small damp patches where the eggs touch each other. My favorite method is to simply put the wet basket in the refrigerator and pack the eggs into cartons later, when they’re dry.

In any event, you don’t have to use immersion washers. The method I give later on for hand-washing eggs works better than immersion washers, and doesn’t violate any USDA rules. It’s suitable for kitchen-sink egg-washing.

8. What should I know about spray-type egg washers?

The spray-type egg washers don’t immerse the eggs. Instead, they use a water spray that runs down the drain. This “total-loss” system prevents the bacteria from a contaminated egg from contaminating other eggs. The water spray is generally warm water with detergent and a sanitizer.

Spray-type washers almost always use rotating brushes as well, making them a lot like a car wash for eggs. The eggs come out dry, ready to be packet onto egg flats or into egg cartons immediately. This simplifies the whole process.

The best way of washing eggs is with an Sani-Touch/AquaMagic candler-washer-dryer-grader machine. Everyone I know with a farm flock bigger than 200 hens either considers these machines indispensable, or lusts after one. These are expensive, with simple washer/dryer models starting at around $6,000 new, but they have been in continuous production for around 50 years, so old ones can sometimes be found for between $1,000 and $2,000 by putting an ad in you regional farm newspaper. Beware, though, that such units are often decrepit. The machines are complex and are hard to figure out if more than one thing is broken.

10. How can I clean eggs without making them wet?

Dry cleaning. Washing eggs in water is a lot more complicated than dry cleaning with abrasives. You can clean up lightly soiled eggs with various abrasives. Sanding sponges from 3M and others are good, and can be found in any hardware store. Loofas are also good. Some people use sandpaper or steel wool, but these aren’t as good as the first two.

Basically, you rub the egg until it’s clean, or you give up, or it breaks in your hand. This happens more often than you’d think, because dirty eggs are often cracked as well.

Dry cleaning doesn’t work very well to clean up eggs that have been smeared with the white or yolk of broken eggs in the nest.

Whatever tools you use to clean the eggs, wash and sanitize them from time to time.  Clean loofas or sanding sponges in soap and water, sanitize them in water with a little bit of bleach, then allow to dry.

These methods of cleaning are slow and tedious. They are suitable for small flocks, but when you have significant numbers of eggs to sell, the labor involved in cleaning the dirty ones can become a big barrier to success and satisfaction. If you want to have a small commercial flock on your farm, you will almost certainly want to look into wet cleaning.

11. What about mechanical dry-process egg washing machines?

Various dry-process egg-cleaning machines have been made, using sandpaper to scour the eggs. These have a tendency to turn the manure adhering to the eggs into a cloud of fine powder, which I wouldn’t breathe if I were you! I’ve never used one of these machines.

12. How do I prevent dirty eggs?

It’s typical for about 30% of your eggs to be dirty when collected. Washing eggs is tedious, so it helps if you prevent as many dirty eggs as possible.  Ways to reduce dirty eggs include:

• Prevent hens from sleeping in the nest boxes. Chickens want to sleep at the highest point available, so you can save yourself trouble by installing roosts that are quite a bit higher than your nest boxes. Once you’ve dealt with that, hens who stay in the nest box at night are probably broody.  They should be kept in a broody coop (a cage with a wire floor) for three or four days.  A broody coop is so unlike a nest that it tends to cure them of broodiness in three or four days. Give them food and water or they’ll go into a molt.
• Prevent hens from entering the nests with muddy feet. This is especially troublesome for hens with outdoor access.  If there’s a broad stretch of litter (straw or wood shavings) on the floor between the henhouse door and the nest boxes, their feet will be less muddy. Also, if you arrange it so they have to walk across a shallow tray filled with powdered gypsum, powdered limestone (not hydrated lime or quicklime — those are caustic!) or diatomaceous earth before entering the nest boxes, their feet will get coated with powder and won’t leave marks on the eggs. Replacing the perches on the nest boxes with trays about four inches wide will work.
• Prevent broken Eggs. Nests with insufficient nest litter or with too many hens jammed in at once will have broken eggs. These eggs are not only a total loss in themselves, but add a messy, hard-to-clean coating on other eggs.  I think that nests that are unusually wide and have unusually deep litter work very well.  I removed half of the partitions from a pair of 8′ nest boxes, leaving them with holes two feet wide instead of one foot wide, and this worked very well.  If the front boards on nest boxes are 6-8″ high instead of the traditional 4″ high, you can pile in a lot more litter.  If you use relatively heavy litter such as straw or wood chips, the hens don’t scratch it all out of the box as quickly as wood shavings.
• Reduce traffic. Every time a hen enters the nest box or moves around while inside, there’s a chance of an egg breaking.  Darkening the nests makes the hens less active. Turning the nest boxes around to face the wall or darkening the front with flaps of plastic tarp work well. Using community nests or tunnel nests also works. Finally, roll-out nests allow the eggs to roll into a collection area away from the hens.

More Resources

• Small-Scale Egg Handling from ATTRA.
• USDA Egg Grading Manual. Egg washing is covered on pages 6-7. The other sections are also worth reading.

Getting started with baby chicks? Robert Plamondon, author of Success With Baby Chicks, tells you what you need to know.

1. How should I brood day-old chicks?

For a complete list of steps, see my baby chick checklist.

Baby chicks need an external source of heat. Naturally brooded chicks are warmed by nestling against their mothers. Groups of chicks can maintain body heat by huddling together, which is why day-old chicks can be shipped by mail.

People brooding fewer than 1,000 chicks at once generally use electric brooders.

Large commerical poultry operations generally use big propane brooders with a central brooder and a metal canopy, or hover, that retains the heat. Each brooder handles up 1,000 or more chicks.

It is possible to brood chicks without supplemental heat in an insulated box with feathers or flaps of cloth hanging from the ceiling, retaining their body heat allowing huddling to work more effectively. But such brooders are tricky to use and less effective than ones that supply external heat.

Brooding needs to be performed in an area where floor drafts, predators, unsupervised children, and cats can be excluded. Some people brood their chicks in their homes, but after trying this myself, I can’t recommend it. The smell isn’t too bad for the first week, but it becomes really repulsive after that! And the entire room containing the chicks becomes coated with a dust composed largely of dried chick manure.

Brooders always present a certain amount of fire hazard, so there’s a lot to be said for brooding the chicks in isolated, cheaply constructed brooder houses with metal roofs.

Brooder houses generally have litter on the floor, preferably with a layer of softwood shavings at least four inches thick. Wire-floored “battery brooders” can also be used.  These use wire floors with a droppings pan underneath. They are very easy to use, and the chicks do well in them, but they smell worse than the other kinds of brooders.

2. What kind of brooder should I use?

Many of the suggested brooder arrangements and even some commercial brooders assume that the chicks are in a heated room. This includes the classic “60-watt lamp in a coffee can” brooder, battery brooders, and even the electric hover brooder sold by GQF. If you have a heated room to put these brooder in, fine. If not, you need something more powerful.

A 250-watt heat lamp suspended 18-24 inches over the brooding area that is completely surrounded by a draft guard 12-18 inches high will brood 75 chicks at 50 °F minimum room temperature. (If the minimum temperature is higher, you can add one chick for each degree. If the minimum temperature is lower, subtract one chick per degree.) This method works very well, but is absolutely dependent on the presence of an effective draft guard, which you can make out of cardboard, plywood, roofing paper, or whatever.

The heat lamp must be high enough that all the chicks can sprawl out in its warmth. If it’s too low, they’ll push and shove to get into the beam. If it’s too high, they’ll let you know because of the ear-splitting peeps the emit when they’re cold.

Set your heat lamp up correctly, following my brooder-lamp safety tips. Make sure the bulb can’t fall to the ground.  It can set litter on fire if it comes within a few inches of it. Hang it with a chain, and arrange it so the cord acts as a safety line in case it falls off the chain somehow.  You can buy commecial brooder lamp holders that have a couple of  curved wires in front of the bulb so it won’t touch the litter even if it falls to the floor. Don’t use the crummy clamp lights you find at the hardware store: they fall down (or fall apart) if you look at them sideways.

A better brooder uses heat lamps mounted horizontally in a plywood brooder box insulated with shavings heaped on top. Read how to build an insulated brooder in a couple of hours. It uses only a third the electricity per chick as a heat lamp, is less dependent on the brooder guard, and is excellent for cold-weather brooding. This type of brooder is very easy and cheap to build and has quite a track record (it was introduced in 1940).

3. How do I set up my brooder area for baby chicks?

Prepare your brooder area before the chicks arrive and fire up the brooder 24 hours in advance. The litter under the brooder must be warm and dry to the touch before the chicks arrive. The entire brooder house doesn’t have to be heated; in fact, you can brood successfully if the brooder house is well below freezing so long as the brooder is powerful enough to keep the area under the hover warm. In a very cold house,  you need to put the waterers so they’re right next to the hover so the escaping heat will keep the water from freezing.

In cold weather, it’s doubly important to prevent floor drafts through the use of draft guards about 12-18 inches high that encircle the brooder. This keeps drafts away and keeps the baby chicks from wandering too far from the hover. The colder the weather, the closer the draft guard should be to the heat, extending no more than two feet from the brooder. In hot weather, where overheating is a possibility, the draft guard can be larger, or it can be made of wire mesh instead of cardboard, so it keeps the chicks near the brooder without stopping drafts.

Baby chicks should have water available right way. It should be warm; day-old chicks are easily chilled. I use one-quart chick waterers placed on 3/4″ or 1.5″ thick lumber scraps about 4 inches square. This keeps the waterers from sinking too far into the litter. You want the waterers pretty close to the floor, though, because chicks have no instinct to search for water much above ground level. The quart waterers are just bases that screw onto one-quart mason jars. You can buy plastic jars, but they should not be used because thirsty chicks are attracted to the glass, which looks like water. Use 4-6 quart waterers per 100 chicks.

The chicks have a tendency to get soaked in waterers with wide bowls for the first day or two, and will die of chilling when this happens. It’s better to use little waterers at first. After a few days, you can put in regular waterers without risk. Remove the little waterers at a rate of one per day, so the chicks have plenty of time to learn about the new fixtures.

Ideally, the chicks should be fed about three hours after they’ve been placed in the brooder. This gives them time to drink first. Chicks tend to be dehydrated, and it helps a little if they drink before they eat. If you can’t absolutely positively be around three hours later, though, feed them at once. Their first feed should be given on flattish surfaces at ground level, since their instinct is to stand over (or in) their food and pick it up from ground level. The box lids from chick shipping boxes are the traditional first feeders, but egg flats are also good. Use one egg flat per fifty chicks.  Some people just use a single thickness of newspaper to put the feed on. In any event, you want about one square foot per fifty chicks, and you want to put a thick layer of feed on it. The chicks will waste a lot of it, but this will only go on for a few days.

I like to have the regular feeders set up and filled from the very beginning. Other people add them at three days or so. Starting after three days, you gradually taper off the amount of feed put into the first feeders, and quit using them altogether at a week or so.

4. How do I avoid sick chicks?

The main threat to growing chicks is coccidiosis. Coccidiosis is an intestinal parasite that exists just about everywhere. It can take a heavy toll on chicks, starting from about three weeks of age. The parasite multiplies greatly in the gut of the chick, and vast numbers of “oocycsts” (think of them as eggs) come out in the manure. Chicks raised on litter floors scratch and peck at the litter, looking for food, and become infected. The explosive multiplication of the coccidia can lead to dead, stunted, and sick chicks.

Chicks that are exposed to only low levels of coccidia become immune without becoming sick.

Control is achieved by breaking the coccidiosis reproductive cycle. Chicks raised on wire floors don’t get coccidiosis becuase they don’t have enough contact with manure. Chicks raised on free range from a very early age tend not to get it because they also don’t have enough exposure. Chicks raised on old litter (used for at least six months) tend not to get it because the litter eventually harbors miscroscopic creatures that eat coccidia. Medicated chick starter contains drugs that suppress coccidia directly.

Wet litter, crowding, intermittent feeding, and any type of stress tend to increase coccidiosis. (If the feeders are empty, the chicks will spend more time nosing around in the litter.)

Like most diseases, coccidiosis outbreaks are hit-or-miss, with some flocks seemingly hit for no good reason, while others escape unscathed even when conditions are ripe for an outbreak.

If you have an outbreak of coccidiosis, switch to medicated chick starter immediately. (A lot of people don’t like the idea of using medicated feed, and are narcissistic enough to  let their chickens suffer and die instead of doing anything about it. Don’t be like them! Once coccidiosis symptoms appear, you’ve already lost your chance to raise a drug-free flock. Do the right thing and end the suffering by treating the disease.

And no, non-drug interventions like the “milk-flush” method don’t work. Next time, try brooding only half as many chicks. The less you crowd ’em, the less trouble you’ll have.

Birds in pasture pens, on free range, and in cages rarely develop coccidiosis, but confined and yarded birds are at risk. While coccidiosis generally affects chicks, it can affect hens who have not been exposed early in life, and thus have no immunity.

Treating Coccidiosis.

Anti-coccidial drugs are very effective. At the very least, a flock of chicks that is looking poorly and are in the coccidiosis danger zone (3-7 weeks) ought to be switched to medicated chick starter immediately. This will be most effective if you do it right away, because medicated chick starter has low doses that are designed to prevent coccidiosis, not cure it. With a serious outbreak, you need to put a coccidiostat in the water, since sick chicks that will not eat will still drink.

A little sermon. A lot of people believe that drug substitutes such as garlic and herbs and spices are as effective as drugs, but they are not. They may have some value as a preventative, just as exercise may have value in preventing heart attacks in humans, but only a few of us would make someone having a heart attack out to run around the block.

It’s not the salad mixin’s in the feed or the geraniums in the window boxes that keep baby chicks healthy, it’s basic maintenance. If they get sick, head into the coop and fix everything that’s not right: wipe the waterers clean, remove wet litter, keep manure out of the feeders, and make sure the chicks have easy access to plenty of actual chick feed that’s actually nutritionally balanced.

And no matter how many ground-up unicorns and rainbows went into the feed you’re using, replace it with Purina medicated chick starter, or some other standard brand.

5. What should I feed baby chicks?

For the first two days (only), it’s a good idea to feed baby chicks nothing but chick scratch or cracked corn. If brooder or shipping temperatures are too low or too variable (or if there is a draft that chills the chicks), chicks tend to “paste up” and have dried feces (or “poop,” as it is technically known)  attached to their rears, which can plug up the works and even kill them. A whole-grain diet for the first couple of days reduces the volume of poop and reduces the problem. After two days, chick starter should gradually replace the grain. This can be done by feeding grain in the first feeders and chick starter in the regular feeders.

In general, chicks need to be fed a balanced diet, which means one that’s been formulated by a poultry nutritionist, not one of the harebrained recipes that you’ll find floating around the Web.

Chicks, like older poultry, can balance their own diets pretty accurately if offered a variety of foodstuffs, but all of the ingredients have to be available in palatable form. This is mostly a game that’s played with older chickens. In the brooder house, it’s best to rely on a nutritionally balanced chick starter.

If you are raising broilers, use a broiler feed such as Purina’s Flock Raiser or Nutrena’s Meatbird. We’ve had excellent results with both. Birds raised in confinement beyond three weeks should be fed medicated feed from the start. Birds moved to free range early in life will do fine on non-medicated feed.

If you want to mix your own feed—don’t. If you insist, you will need a vitamin/mineral premix to supply all the nutrients that are hard to find an an affordable, palatable form. Most small producers who custom-mix their own feed use a recipe from Fertrell Corp. along with Fertrell’s Nutri-Balancer premix.

6. How much brooder space should I use? How much floor space?

I recommend 10-14 chicks per square foot of brooder canopy. Manufacturers often exaggerate the capacity of a brooder, giving the number of chicks it can handle at one day of age, and not mentioning that they will need much more brooder space in a week or two. If you crowd the brooder, all will be well for the first two or three weeks. After that, the chicks will outgrow the brooder and there may be deaths due to crowding as they stuggle and fight to get into the heat. If this happens, reduce the number of chicks per brooder next time, and, for the current batch, increase the heated area — for example, by using a heat lamp and raising it high enough that the warmed area is large enough to hold all the chicks comfortably. This will work even though the higher bulb will provide a lower floor temperature. With box brooders, raise them up on blocks to increase the transition area between the warm inside and the cold outside.

It’s best to use at least half a square foot of floor space per chick for the first two weeks and one square foot after that. You can get away with less—most of the time, sort of—but crowding is a trouble magnet. It causes problems to appear that simply wouldn’t happen with more space, and they get out of control fast. With crowding, you’re more likely to see cannibalism, coccidiosis, piling (where frightened chicks crowd into corners and suffocate each other), wet litter, ammonia smells, runts, dirtiness, and death.

Try one square foot of floor space with your first batch of baby chicks to avert disaster while you’re still learning the ropes.

7. I have more questions!

Great—I have more answers. It’s all in my book, Success With Baby Chicks.

My rooster is attacking people. What do I do?

The first thing to do is to ask yourself, “Am I smarter than a rooster?”

Most people aren’t. They let the rooster take charge. If the rooster decides it’s time to have a fight, you fight. You don’t question his decision, just his judgment: “He’s crazy: I’m the one who’s going to win!” But you’re not making the decisions—he is. You’re taking orders from a chicken!

Luckily, if you follow my program, you can become smarter than a rooster. Learn how, right now.

Are You Chicken?

Basically, a rooster will size you up and decide either:

• You are another rooster (in which case you have to have a fight).
• You’re not a rooster at all (no fight).

His decision is based on how you act. If you don’t act like a rooster, he’ll leave you alone. Roosters don’t  go around attacking ladders or cows or chicken coops or the moon. Just things they imagine are other roosters.

How Roosters (Sort of) Think

But if he decides that you’re a rooster, he will attack you. It’s a pecking-order thing. After a brief battle he will decide one of three things:

1. He won, and therefore you are supposed to act submissive, or he’ll hold a rematch.
2. You won, and therefore he will act submissive until he decides it’s time for a rematch.
3. It was a tie, and therefore he’ll hold a rematch soon.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the important point: the rooster is in charge of deciding when it’s time for a rematch. Once again, the rooster is in charge. You’re not.

How to Not Be a Rooster

People who are smart know that roosters only want rematches with other roosters. They also remember remember they’re people, and not roosters at all! The rooster was mistaken, and it was all just a silly misunderstanding. So the goal is to prevent the rooster from forming the opinion that humans are fellow roosters. The way to achieve this is simple: don’t act like a rooster.

The way to achieve this is simple: don’t act like a rooster.

Basically, it comes down to this: Act like a caring human being. When crossing the chicken yard, don’t come roaring in like a freight train and don’t walk straight at them as if you’re going to trample them. It makes them feel threatened.

The chicken dance. Roosters have a warm-up dance that precedes an attack, in which they nervously shift from one foot to the other and generally look unhappy. Give them a break and edge away if they start acting like this. They’ll forget all about you.

Rooster Taming

Roosters who have already decided that you are one of them can be desensitized. Roosters can only keep track of one thought at a time. If you toss them a handful of grain while they’re winding up for an attack, they will forget all about you and call over a bunch of hens to share the bounty. After a few days of this, their aggression will be greatly diminished. This works best if the roosters are hungry or the feed you offer is at least different from what’s in the feeder 24/7.

I learned this trick after one of my kids got into a scrap with a rooster. The kid lost, to the point where he was no longer willing to go out on the chicken pasture. Fair enough, but the rooster walked away from the experience with the belief that all humans were roosters, not just the one kid.

So I tried the desensitization trick on the rooster, and that worked fine for me. He never attacked anyone again.

Word Gets Around

For anyone who is not convinced, let’s hold up the practice of “showing the rooster who’s boss” to the “front-page photo” test. Which would you rather have on the front page of your local newspaper: A picture of you kicking a rooster, or one of you feeding him a handful of grain? Your neighbors know that you’re not a rooster, and that means they won’t cut you any slack if you kick one around.

Sadly, a few people, even grown-ups, have trouble resisting a challenge. “The rooster made me do it.” You gotta wonder. Because if a chicken can tell you what to do, then imagine the kind of trouble that challenges from the dog, or a co-worker, or your spouse, or the wallpaper can get you into!

Uses for Incorrigible Roosters

Some roosters are incorrigible and will attack anybody, even if you follow these rules. I’ve only ever had one. These roosters should be made into chicken and dumplings.

On the other hand, some poultrykeepers are themselves incorrigible and can’t resist keeping vicious roosters, enjoying the sight of the attacks on neighbors, relatives, visitors, and children. The world would no doubt be a better place if these owners were made into people and dumplings.

When all else fails:

Look deeply into my eyes: When you leave this page, you will be convinced: You are not a chicken. You are not a chicken. You are not a chicken.

Do You Need a Rooster?

Hens lay just as many eggs if you don’t even have a rooster. Hens don’t really like roosters very much, anyway. Roosters will sometimes help defend the flock, especially by keeping a watch on the sky for hawks. But their presence in a flock is optional unless you plan on hatching some eggs.

Why Are They Called Roosters?

They weren’t always called “roosters.” They used to be called “cocks.” Apparently this sounded rude to some people. Though why they didn’t change the name of peacocks while they were at it, I can’t imagine.

How Can You Stop a Rooster From Crowing?

In Poultry Breeding and Management (which I have republished under my Norton Creek Press label), Prof. Dryden has this to say about roosters and crowing on page 156:

Where the method of buying pullets is followed, the rooster is unnecessary. The hens will lay as well without him, and the objections of the neighbors to chickens on account of the early morning crowing will be overcome. If desired to keep a male, he may be discouraged from crowing by placing a board or hanging canvas over his perch at such a height as to prevent him from stretching his neck. A rooster in crowing raises his head at a considerable height, an if he cannot raise it to the desired height there will be little crowing.

In spite of being 100 years old, Poultry Breeding and Management is full of good ideas like this. Not only are they good ideas, but you won’t hear them anywhere else, because they’ve been forgotten. Highly recommended!

Note that this will discourage crowing while the rooster is on the perch, which of course he will be all night. Most people have far less objection to daytime crowing than nighttime crowing.

What is a dropping board? It’s a board you place under the chicken roosts, where it collects manure and smells bad.

Why would use use a dropping board? Well, there are some things in favor of them. But it also seems to be one of those 19th century poultrykeeping ideas that hang on mostly by tradition.

Disadvantages of Dropping Boards

In Fresh-Air Poultry Houses, Dr. Woods wrote the following:

Recently I was in a plaster-finished closed-type poultry house where the dropping boards are scraped clean daily and sprinkled with earth. The house was decidedly smelly, though apparently clean. The manure-saturated wood of the dropping board, which has been treated frequently with disinfectants, contributed largely to the stench. I would not want a house like that and would find it unpleasant to work in one, but it seemed to suit the owner, and as he appeared so well satisfied I made no comment.

Alternatives to Dropping Boards

Now, this was written over 90 years ago, yet dropping boards already seemed burdensome and old-fashioned. So what are the alternatives?

No Dropping Boards at All

Dr. Woods makes the following observations:

Most of my houses are not provided with dropping boards, and such really seem more sanitary to me. In these houses the drop­pings fall to the floor beneath the roosts where they are quickly cov­ered with sand, earth and litter which the fowls scratch over them. Fowls usually scratch with their heads toward the light and so throw a good deal of absorbent material toward the rear of the house. Under such conditions very frequent cleaning is not necessary.

And

I know a good many successful, practical poultrymen who do not use dropping boards in their poultry houses. One of these men has about 2000 layers and does all of his own work. He cleans out his poultry houses regularly spring and fall and oftener if the droppings become offensive. He says that he can depend upon his nose to tell him when the houses need cleaning and that he has no use for dropping boards and no time to waste fussing with them. I think he knows what he is talking about for I have visited his plant often and his houses are always in good sanitary condition and free from offensive odors. His fowls are healthy and productive.

Slanted Dropping Boards

But what if space is tight, and you need to park equipment (feeders, nest boxes, etc.) below the roosts? Dr. Woods has an answer to that, too: the slanted dropping board. This allows the droppings to roll downhill and accumulate at the back of the wall. Surprisingly, this is less smelly than a horizontal dropping board, and can be cleaned only at long intervals.

The dropping board extends from the rear sill to the roost supports, fitting snugly to the end wall and partition to form a hopper to collect droppings. The dropping board is not made fast and lifts out for cleaning. With a flock of healthy fowl this dropping hopper can go all winter without need of cleaning out, which saves labor over ordinary dropping boards which must be cleaned daily. The roosts “R,R” are not made fast to the roost supports. They are drilled at ends and in center to fit on spikes which project from roost supports and can be easily lifted off when desired. Kept clean and kerosened now and then, they are practically mite proof. The dropping hopper does not collect mites, as would accumulations of droppings close beneath the roosts.

Dropping Pits

A later development was the dropping pit. When the chicken house is built rather high up in the air, or for chickens in laying cages, this can work very well, with the roosts over a screened opening that lets the dropping fall to what is essentially a basement level, where they can be allowed to accumulate until they become a nuisance, then shoveled out, as shown in the photo below, from Leslie Card’s Poultry Production, which is more recent that Fresh-Air Poultry Houses and shows additional twists to the poultry game.

Manure Conveyors

The spiffiest is the manure conveyor belt, which removes the droppings from the chicken coop with a maximum of convenience. The photo, also from Poultry Production, shows a manure conveyor disgorging its contents into an old-fashioned manure spreader.

Deep Litter

The rise of deep litter for chicken coops during World War II meant that many henhouses had a much greater volume of litter than before, and this dilutes the manure and keeps it from being nasty. In the old days, when Dr. Woods was writing, many poultrykeepers kept a very thin layer of litter on the floor, and replaced it constantly. Such an inadequate volume of litter is easily overwhelmed by manure, which may be where dropping boards came from in the first place.

With deep litter, simply letting the manure fall to the floor seems as good a method as any, provided that the house isn’t too crowded.

See my Deep Litter FAQ.

Superphosphate

I have read in multiple sources that sprinkling superphosphate fertilizer reduces odors best, better than lime or dirt, for example.

Final Thoughts by Dr. Woods

I think that every poultry keeper safely can be left to decide for himself how often he will clean poultry houses and dropping boards. It is his business not mine. Of course, where dropping boards are used they should be cleaned sufficiently often to prevent accumulations of droppings becoming offensive. It is difficult to keep the wood of dropping boards in sanitary condition no matter how often they may be cleaned.

 And if these ideas gave you food for thought, just imagine how many more are waiting for you in the eight books making up my Norton Creek Classics series! You may have to buy a whole new brain!