Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (95 page)

Although an important part of the Red Label diet is natural forage, if you don’t have available pasture, you can still enjoy broilers of similar flavor by raising grain-fed fryers. Feeding your birds up to 70 percent of their diet in scratch grains results in a slower growth rate that compares with the growth of range-fed chickens. Like ranged birds, they won’t be ready for butchering until about 13 weeks.

If a finisher ration is available, feed chicks commercial rations for the first 6 weeks, switch entirely to scratch grains (with a vitamin/mineral supplement) until the last 2 weeks, then let finisher supply 30 percent of their diet. If you have grower ration available or only one starter/grower formula, feed your chicks commercial rations for the first 4 weeks, then switch to grower (or stay with the starter/grower) for 30 percent of their diet and scratch grains for the remaining 70 percent right to the end. In any case, as soon as you offer your birds scratch, they’ll need free-choice granite grit to digest the grains.

The use of drugs to improve the growth rate of chickens has been banned in Europe since 2007 and may soon be illegal in the United States as well. Medications found in rations fed to industrially produced chickens include low levels of antibiotics to improve feed conversion. The widespread use of antibiotics in poultry and other livestock feed has contributed to the evolution of human disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to treatment by drugs.

The class of drugs known as fluoroquinolones, for example, was allowed in poultry feed from 1995 until 2005. One of the illnesses effectively treated with
fluoroquinolones is food poisoning caused by
Campylobacter
, a kind of bacteria commonly found in chickens. Since 1995 we have seen a dramatic jump in the incidence of people infected by fluoroquinolone-resistant
Campylobacter
.

If you should get a bacterial disease from eating a chicken raised without the use of antibiotics, you stand a better chance of being cured with antibiotics than if you get sick from eating a chicken carrying a strain of bacteria that is drug-resistant because the chicken was fed antibiotic-laced rations. Of course, by growing your own, you can more easily avoid chicken-related foodborne bacterial illness. Furthermore, antibiotics are not included in the prepared rations sold for home use, so avoiding them in your homegrown chickens is simply a matter of not medicating your birds.

You can discourage disease-causing bacteria through
competitive exclusion
, by reducing the pH in the crop to encourage the number of beneficial bacteria that make it to the intestines. On a commercial scale, intestinal pH is reduced by adjusting the feed formula to be more acidic. An easy way to introduce acidity for the home flock is to add apple cider vinegar to the drinking water, but take care not to add so much the chickens stop drinking.

One tablespoon (15 cc) of vinegar per gallon (4 L) of water is sufficient unless the water is naturally alkaline, in which case you should double the vinegar. Some growers additionally help along the process of competitive exclusion by feeding broilers beneficial bacteria and yeasts in a probiotic formula designed to stimulate the immune system and fend off disease-causing bacteria.

A second kind of medication contained in feed, including some rations available for backyard flocks, is a coccidiostat to prevent coccidiosis, an intestinal disease that interferes with nutrient absorption and drastically reduces the growth rate of infected broilers. If you raise chicks in a warm, humid climate or at a warm, humid time of year, the only way to avoid using a coccidiostat is either through the meticulous sanitation of confinement housing or by getting the birds into a pasture rotation as quickly as possible, at least by the time they are 3 or 4 weeks old. You must be especially careful to keep litter clean and dry for indoor birds and move range-fed birds frequently to prevent a buildup of droppings. Otherwise, without the use of a coccidiostat, you’ll be fighting a losing battle against the disease.

If you decide to feed a medicated ration, you must still find some kind of nonmedicated ration to use during the drug’s
withdrawal period
. This withdrawal period supposedly represents the minimum number of days that must pass from the time drug use stops until drug residues no longer appear in the meat. If the ration’s label does not specify a withdrawal period, ask your feed dealer to look it up for you in his spec book. If you simply cannot find out, allow a withdrawal
period of no less than 30 days. Where a nonmedicated ration is not available, scratch grain (plus a vitamin/mineral supplement) may be your only option to supplement natural forage during the withdrawal period.

Whether you are feeding a medicated or nonmedicated ration, keep drinking water clean of droppings and eliminate manure-laden puddles your broilers might sample. Clean water serves more purposes than preventing disease — broilers that don’t have free access to fresh water eat less and therefore grow at a slower rate.

Health issues of homegrown meat birds primarily relate to rapid growth and heavy weight. Common issues for commercial strain broilers are lameness, breast blister, and heart failure. Among utility breeds, breast blister is the most common health concern.

Commercial-strain Cornish-cross broilers are developed for such rapid growth that their bodies get too heavy for their little legs to carry them. Difficulty walking is therefore a significant issue among strains developed for industrial production. The faster a bird grows, the greater its risk of going lame.

During the past half century, the rate of industrial-broiler growth has increased from less than 1 ounce (25 g) per day to today’s rate of 3½ (100 g) ounces per day. Where a broiler once took 13 weeks to reach 4½ pounds (2 kg), today’s commercial broilers reach that weight in as little as 5 weeks. As a result of the strain on their legs and joints, those fast-growing birds can’t get around well, and a small percentage can’t walk at all. A study as early as 1972 concluded the “birds might have been bred to grow so fast that they are on the verge of structural collapse.”

When a broiler gets so heavy its legs can’t support its body, the bird can’t get to feed and water, leaving it to get trampled by the more mobile birds and eventually die of either starvation or dehydration. In industry, up to 2 percent of lame broilers must be killed before they reach market weight.

Although it shouldn’t take a PhD to see when a chicken is in distress, the broiler industry has devised various lameness scoring systems to determine when a review of management practices might be needed and at what point a lame bird should be humanely put down. The typical progression of lameness is:

No lameness
— the chicken walks freely, bending the toes of its raised foot as it walks

Detectable lameness
— the chicken is mobile but somewhat unsteady, and the raised foot may remain flat with spread toes

Abnormal gait
— the chicken is mobile, although one leg takes short, quick, unsteady steps (like a person with a sprained ankle)

Severely impaired
— the chicken doesn’t want to walk; if you stand it up, it may take a few steps before plopping down, perhaps struggling backward (backpeddling) on its hocks

Completely lame
— the chicken can’t stand up but may try to shuffle around on its hocks

When a chicken reaches the impaired stage, it may develop a kinky back. Too-rapid growth causes the vertebrae to twist and pinch the spinal cord. Typically, an affected broiler will arch its back, extend its neck, squat with its feet off the ground and its weight on its hocks and tail, and backpeddle. The bird may fall over and be unable to get up, become paralyzed, and die from dehydration. The humane thing to do for impaired and completely lame broilers is put them out of their misery.

The best way to minimize leg-health problems in commercial-strain broilers is to reduce their growth rate. Some backyard broiler growers do so by removing feed overnight to decrease eating time during early morning hours. A study published in 2008 by researchers at England’s Bristol University determined that broiler lameness also may be reduced by feeding whole wheat, which has the added benefit of improving digestion; reducing the number of hours the broilers are under light, thereby decreasing the amount of time they spend eating; reducing crowded conditions; feeding a nonpelleted ration, which increases the amount of time required to eat the same amount of feed. Of course, you could avoid the lameness issue altogether by raising a utility breed that doesn’t achieve the exaggerated growth rate of industrial broilers.

Broilers that have trouble standing or walking spend a lot of time resting with their weight against their breastbone, or keel. The pressure of the breastbone against the ground causes irritation and inflammation, resulting in a large blister, also known as
keel cyst
,
keel bursitis
, or
sternal bursitis
.

Housing broilers on wire or on wet or hard-packed litter and providing roosts for heavy birds to perch on increase the chance that breast blisters will develop. Another factor is poor feather development, which results in fewer feathers to protect the breast.