MANUFACTURE OF POULTRYDRINKER AND FEEDER
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Views: 2023 Author: LONGMU Publish Time: 2023-06-02 Origin: LONGMU
Keeping poultry backyard chickens has become a big business as statistics suggest that one percent of American families may now include a backyard chicken coop or a few.
Raising backyard chickens as a family project is also a great way to teach kids about the cycles of life and about caring for animals. Kids may feel incredibly connected to the chickens they have helped to raise.
This is one of many reasons why you want to make sure you have the safest and most secure chicken roosts for your flock.
Chickens are social animals, which means they have an innate genetic need to be together at all times, even during sleep.
Because of their status as a prey species, chickens have also evolved to perch up high in trees during the night. This is a safer place to sleep to evade potential predators evad potential predators.
Chickens also need a certain type of roosting perch in order to get good sleep. Their roost needs to be comfortable and healthy for their feet.
A chicken roost is a perch，also called a chicken coop. The word “roost” means to sit or settle or gather. Choosing the right chicken roosts is incredibly important to the health of your flock!
In summary, the ideal chicken roost should provide your chickens with all of these elements:
It offers ease of access to nesting boxes in the morning.
Mounted high enough to offer a sense of security inside your chicken coops.
Sufficiently long to accommodate multiple chickens roosting together.
Sturdy and secure to support the weight of multiple chickens.
Appropriate width to avoid placing stress on your chickens’ feet.
Non-slip to prevent injury or infection to your chickens’ feet.
Reasonably easy to access and clean to maintain a sanitary roosting area.
Before you can choose the best bar material for your chicken roosts, it is important to learn about how chickens perch.
A chicken will sit on a roosting perch mostly flat-footed, with only the ends of the toes curling around the perch. Chickens also rest primarily on their keel bone, which is the central bone in a chicken’s body to which the flight bones are connected .
The best bar material is always going to be natural wood because this is what chickens would roost on in a wild setting. For this reason, it is always nice to use thicker natural branches if you can find them.
When chickens don’t have a proper perch may develop pressure point sores or lesions on their feet and stress fractures in their keel bone.
However, when using prepared wood, you will need to sand it down to remove splinters and rough areas that could injure your chickens.
For older or arthritic chickens, you may want to wrap a softer material around it, such as some thick rubber, for comfort.
Because chickens roost with flat feet, thinner is not better when it comes to the width of a roosting perch. But then again, too wide can cause problems as well.
For adult chickens of average size, aim for anywhere from two to two and a half inches of flat surface for perching, also laying hens would prefer this is the perch size too. Slightly rounding the edges of the roosting perch can avoid abrasions and injuries, but you don’t need to create a round perch since your chickens won’t wrap their toes around the perch.
In fact, having a little more width to the perch can also guard against abrasions on the keel bone.
Another reason why natural material is always a better choice for your chickens’ roosting perches is because it offers a more stable grip surface.
Modern plastic perches may be lighter in weight and easier to change out, but they tend to be slippery. Similarly, steel is very sanitary and easy to clean, but it can be extremely slippery and also uncomfortable during heat or cold.
Covering your natural wood perches with a layer of soft rubber, however, can help pullets and elder hens retain a firm grip throughout the night without slipping.
How high should your chicken roosts be mounted? This will depend in part on the heigh of your chicken coop as well as the number of chickens you are accommodating.
Ideally, the coops will be at least as tall as you are so you don’t have to stoop to enter.
For your chickens’ comfort and safety, try not to mount the lowest roost any lower than 12 inches off the ground. The lowest roost will typically be occupied by lower-ranking flock members, which may include chick or pullets. And since chicks and pullets won’t be very experienced at roosting yet, lower roosts are also better for their safety.
For the adult laying hens, however, they will appreciate higher roosts when possible. But you want to choose a height that is appropriate for your breed of chicken. Heavier, bigger chickens won’t be able to easily fly to any roost that is higher than about 18 inches.
For smaller, lighter-weight poultry birds, you can place your roosts higher up – two feet (24 inches) above the floor is ideal.
As well know, hens preferred a roosting perch location that is nearer to the hen laying boxes.
Because most hens lay on a near-daily basis and first thing in the morning, offering a roost that is very near the chicken nesting boxes mean hens don’t have far to go to start pushing out their morning eggs.
Because chickens are a flocking species, they do maintain an internal pecking order.
A healthy adult chicken may eliminate waste up to 15 times per day, all day and all night.
So if you have a larger flock and you need to install multiple roosting bars, you will need to find a way to stagger them so that birds perched up high won’t eliminate on birds perched lower down.
It will also be important to plan for how you can easily access and clean both the roosts and the ground below. You want to keep these areas very clean to avoid the spread of infection and disease.
Modern best practices suggest staggering the perches in a stair-step pattern and placing some kind of container or material underneath that you can remove to clean off the waste.
Chickens that have proper roosting perches for sleep and daytime use are much more likely to live longer and produce more eggs for you and your family to enjoy. And sanitary roosting perches will limit the spread of infection or mites that could harm your chickens.
Now you have all the basic information you need to construct proper chicken roosts for your flock to roost in a way that is safe and healthy.