Why chick quality shows up in day-7 weight
A cheap chick is the most expensive input on the farm. Day-7 weight is where that shows up, and by then the cycle is largely decided.
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.
DOCایک دن کا چوزہaik din ka chuzaDay-old chick. What you place at the start of a cycle.Glossary → are 10–15% of what a broiler costs to raise, and almost the only input farmers routinely buy on price. The reason that is a mistake is measurable, and it is measurable early.
The number
Day-7 weight 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 it rarely recover. The flock stays behind for the whole cycle and finishes light, late, or both — and the shed gets blamed for what the chick brought with it.
What a chick arrives carrying
Parent flock age. Young parent flocks produce smaller chicks with less yolk reserve. Old flocks produce larger eggs but hatchability and chick vigour decline. Neither is visible in the box.
Hatchery handling. Time between hatch and placement, temperature in transit, and how long chicks sat before loading all cost early growth.
Maternal antibody. This one has a knock-on: it determines when DOCایک دن کا چوزہaik din ka chuzaDay-old chick. What you place at the start of a cycle.Glossary → and Newcastle vaccination will actually take. A flock with uneven maternal antibody is harder to vaccinate correctly, which is a disease problem you inherit on day one.
Checking, before it is too late
Crop fill, at two hours. Pick up 30–40 chicks from different parts of the shed and feel the crop. Soft and rounded means they have eaten.
- At 2 hours: 75% or more should have full crops
- At 24 hours: 95% or more
Miss those and something is wrong right now — feed not accessible, water not found, temperature off, or the shed too dim. It is the only check in the cycle where a problem found early can be completely undone.
Weigh at day 7. A hundred birds, sampled across the shed rather than by the door. Against the target above, this tells you what kind of cycle you are in while you can still act.
Brooding: the first seven days →
The arithmetic on cheap chicks
Suppose a cheaper chick saves you PKR 8 a bird. On 20,000 birds that is PKR 160,000 — a real number.
Now suppose it costs you 0.05 on FCRFeed conversion ratio — kilograms of feed to put on a kilogram of live weight. The single most useful number in broiler production, because feed is 60–75% of what the bird cost.Glossary → and two points of Mortality · deathsامواتamwaatThe daily number every farmer tracks, even on paper.Glossary →. The FCR alone is roughly 2,000 kg of extra feed across the flock; the mortality is 400 birds that ate and produced nothing. At current feed and chick prices, that comfortably exceeds what you saved.
The saving is on the invoice. The cost is spread across sixty days of feed and shows up as a flock that never quite performed. Which is exactly why the trade keeps making it.
Work out what FCR is costing you →
What to ask before placing
- Parent flock age
- Hatch date and time — how long since hatch
- What vaccinations were given at the hatchery, and on what date
- Whether the hatchery will state an expected day-7 weight
A hatchery that can answer all four is selling a different product from one that quotes only a price.