Brooding: the first seven days
The week that decides the cycle. Temperature, chick paper, water, and why day-7 weight predicts everything that follows.
Awaiting veterinary review. This guide is written from published industry practice and has not yet been checked by our domain advisor. Confirm anything clinical with your own veterinarian before acting on it.
A DOCایک دن کا چوزہaik din ka chuzaDay-old chick. What you place at the start of a cycle.Glossary → cannot regulate its own body temperature for about the first five days. Until then the shed is its thermostat, and everything it will become is being set — gut development, immune competence, appetite, frame size.
The industry rule of thumb is that day-7 WeightوزنwazanWhat the bird is sold on.Glossary → should be four to four and a half times hatch weight. A 40 g chick should be 170–190 g at a week. Farms that miss this rarely recover it; the flock stays behind for the whole cycle and finishes light, late, or both.
Before the chicks arrive
Pre-heat for 24 hours. Not the air — the litter and the floor. A chick stands on the litter, and cold litter pulls heat out of it no matter what the air temperature reads. Litter should be 30–32°C when the chicks land.
Check the thermometer at chick height. Readings taken at head height are meaningless. Everything that matters happens in the bottom 15 cm of the shed.
Chick paper under the feed. Spread paper over roughly a third of the brooding area and scatter crumble on it. The sound and the texture teach the chicks to eat far faster than pans alone. Paper should be gone within three or four days.
Temperature by day
| Day | Air at chick level | | --- | --- | | 1–3 | 33–34°C | | 4–7 | 31–32°C | | 8–14 | 29–30°C | | 15–21 | 27–28°C | | 22+ | 24–26°C, to target |
Step down gradually. A sharp drop is worse than a slightly high temperature held steady.
Read the birds, not the gauge
The flock is a better thermometer than the thermometer:
- Evenly spread, quiet, moving between feed and water — correct.
- Huddled under the brooder, chirping loudly — too cold.
- Pushed to the edges, panting, wings lifted — too hot.
- All bunched to one side — a draught. Find it.
Walk the shed at night, when draughts are worst and nobody is watching.
Water first, feed second
Chicks drink before they eat. Water should be available, clean and at 20–24°C — not the near-freezing water that comes out of a line in winter, and not the warm water that sits in an uninsulated tank in summer. Cold water suppresses intake; warm water grows bacteria.
Run the lines before the chicks arrive to flush out anything standing in them.
Crop fill: the one check worth doing
Two hours after placement, pick up 30–40 chicks from different parts of the shed and feel the crop. A full crop feels soft and rounded, like a small balloon.
- At 2 hours: 75% or more should have full crops.
- At 24 hours: 95% or more.
If you miss those numbers, something is wrong right now — feed not accessible, water not found, temperature off, or light too dim. It is the only check in the cycle where a problem found early can be completely undone.
Light
Bright for the first week — around 30–40 lux at bird level, 23 hours on with one hour of dark so the flock learns darkness and does not panic if power fails. Chicks will not find feed in a dim shed.