Beginners Guide to Poultry Housing System

Poultry housing should have proper accessibility, safety, exterior appearance, and appropriateness of design are important aspects of housing for your poultry flock.Before begin to build poultry housing system you should consider how you will access and maintain your poultry housing. You should choose a design that allows for easy access to nests, perches, feeders, and water. Suitable access will make it easier to clean all part of the coop.

Before designing, building, and maintaining your coop, take action to prevent possible injury to you or your birds. You should remove any loose or ragged wire, nails, or other sharp-edged objects from the coop. You should make ensure that the birds can perch on only roosts that you are providing. You should remove access to other perching areas, eg. windowsills, nest box tops, or electric cords, whenever possible.

If the poultry house is visible to your neighbours, you make ensure that it does not detract from the overall appearance of its surroundings. You can improve the looks of your poultry coop by painting and properly maintaining the exterior. Removing weeds and trash from around the coop not only enhances its appearance but also helps with rodent control. you should do landscaping that can screen your poultry coop from neighbours as well as help muffle the sounds your flock produces.

Before making poultry housing system one should keep following things in mind :
• The house should protect birds from adverse climatic conditions.
• It should have easy and economic operation.
• You can do scientific feeding in a controlled manner.
• Provide proper micro-climatic conditions in a near vicinity of bird
• Should have an effective disease control measures.
• You can do proper supervision.
Before selection of location of poultry housing system :
• Your poultry house shouldn’t be near residential and industrial area.
• It should have proper access with road facilities.
• It should have the basic amenities like water, feed and chicks transportation and electricity.
• Wherever you can find farm labourers at relatively cheaper wages.
• It should be located in an elevated area and should not be any water-logging.
• It should have proper ventilation and should be in open area
Before making layout preparation :
• Layout should not allow visitors or outsiders vehicles near the birds.
• The sheds should be ideally located that the fresh air first passes through the brooder shed, followed by grower and layer sheds. This will prevent the spread of diseases from layer houses to brooder house.
• There should be from a minimum distance of 50-100 feet between chick and grower shed and the distance between grower and layer sheds should be of minimum 100 metre.
• The egg store room, office and the feed store room should be located near entrance to overcome the movement of people around the poultry sheds.
• The disposal pit and sick room should be constructed only at the extreme end of the site.

For poultry housing another important factor to consider is the poultry housing system and fencing options. Poultry housing system determines around 40% of the rate of success and profitability of your poultry farming business. A good poultry housing system is very important for the success of your poultry faming.

Following poultry housing system is generally commonly used in poultry farming :
• Extensive Housing System: Range and fold unit
• Semi Intensive Housing System: Standard semi intensive unit and straw yard
• Intensive Housing System: 1. Deep Litter 2. Wire & Slated Floor 3. Straw Yard 4. Battery Cage

A. Free Range System-: Under free range poultry farming system, birds are roaming around on their own in search for food. This poultry housing system cannot be used for commercial poultry farming because of high level of risks involved in it.

B.Deep Litter System-: This system involves spreading wood shavings or saw dust on a concrete ground with the chickens placed on the floor and the dust serving as a ‘cushion’ for them. The dust is changed regularly, either by removing and replacing or by layering. This system is used by a lot of poultry farmers because it increases efficiency and it is easier to manage large flocks of birds but it also allows to spread of diseases when there is an outbreak and also makes it difficult to fish out unproductive birds.

C. Battery Cage System-: As for the battery cage housing system, metal cages are made inside a building to house the birds. The cages are generally split into different compartments to keep small groups of birds. The cages also contain feeding and water pots as well as laying nests. Bird’s droppings fall on the floor and it is cleaned mechanically by a scraper. This method is considered to be the most effective for a layer farming but the major downside of this method is that it is more expensive to construct and maintain in compare to other types of poultry housing systems.

Intensive housing system is the best housing , if you are running a poultry farm for commercial purposes and you intend getting the best out of the business, in term of high birds’ productivity and efficiency. So you should consider for intensive housing system.

Please note all three housing system has its own advantages and disadvantages. You will have to consider accordingly your requirements.You should also read Poultry Housing Tips .

If you are into poultry related business & want to earn maximum profit in your business then please join our Facebook group How To Do Profitable Poultry & Cattle Farming ?