Building chicken coop - week 3

Selasa, 20 Mac 2018, 6:00 pm0

It’s been a week after all the chicks had been moved into this new coop and being fed manually. Today I’m going to install the automatic waterer and feeder. We already have water tank for harvesting rain, and I’m going to connect it to the waterer, and have one end to a valve, for our own usage.

Between the waterer cups, I used 10mm hose, and to connect it to the tank, I used 15mm hose. I bought 10 waterer cups, but decided to use only 5 first as trial. Since the chicks are still small, I put the board to allow them to reach the water inside the cup.

Connection to the tank.

They immediately knew that this is for their drinking water.

For the feeder, I implemented a simple system, where I used a transparent cylindrical plastic container, create some holes on the cap, attach it upside down to a plate, then put it in the coop, tied to a pillar, while placing it a bit high, to prevent the chicken from scratching the feed inside. I’m experimenting with 2 types of feed, corn-based and processed pellets, and still figuring out how long these 2 kg of feed will last.

With the waterer and feed system are installed, now the building process is done. Now I’m left with how to handle sick chicken. Currently I’m left with 16 chicks, and I found out at least 4 of them are sick. Based on traditional method, people used to keep tortoise inside chicken coop, and the water where the tortoise lives will become the cure for any chicken disease when they drink it. For commercial scale, I don’t think that’s feasible, as I need to take care of the tortoises and also their feed. Therefore I’ll try to look for some kind of chicken medicine or vaccine.

For this round, I plan to raise these chicken to become the parent. Maybe one rooster and 5 hens, only then I’ll start to sell them in bulk. It is estimated that these chicken will become adult in May, and able to produce offsprings by July or August. Therefore, I estimate around September, these ayam kampung will be ready to be sold.