Use a Chicken Brooder for Tender Meat

Enlarge Image Image Gallery A complete chicken raising plant. With this broiler battery in your basement, garage or shed, you can raise baby chicks to 2 or 2-1/2 pound broilers in eight to 10 weeks. ILLUSTRATION: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF

One of the most successful projects we've undertaken is raising chickens to eat — broilers and fryers, in what is called a "broiler battery." This efficient new way of raising eating chickens has become increasingly popular among the large commercial poultrymen during the past few years, but only recently have small broiler batteries been made for family use.

Included in this article's image gallery is a picture of our home-sized broiler battery. Here is the way it works: In the top deck we place "30 day-old" chicks, dipping their beaks in the water tray (and the mash) as we take them out of the shipping carton. Dipping their beaks once or twice teaches them where to drink and eat. At the rear of the top deck is a heated chamber with a drape at the front. This is the brooder. It's heated automatically by an electric heat-unit. When the brooder drops below a certain temperature, the heat automatically goes on together with a small light. The light attracts the chicks and they duck under the drape into the warm brooder.

As they get hungry they come out to eat and drink from the feed and water trays. Once or twice a day — and it doesn't have to be done at a definite time — we change the water and add feed, a specially prepared battery broiler mash (be sure to get a vitamin fortified battery feed). The chickens live on wire and are kept sanitary at all times. A few sheets of newspaper spread out in the dropping tray makes the daily cleaning easy — simply pull out tray and roll up newspaper.

At the end of four weeks, the baby chicks are divided into two equal groups — half go into the second deck, half into the lower deck. At the same time, another batch of 30 baby chicks may be added to the top deck.

In another four weeks, and each succeeding four-week period, if you keep your battery running at capacity, you have 30 two-pound broilers.

The Feed Cost of Raising Broilers

Even with today's expensive feed, our chicken costs us only 16 cents a pound. What's more, our battery takes less than 10 minutes a day to operate and it is truly so simple a child can run it. Moreover, you can set it up in the basement, garage or shed — provided that, if you run the brooder during the winter, you have enough heat in any of these places to keep room temperature at 50 degrees Fahrenheit or above.

If you want to keep for your own use 15 broilers a month, then the other 15 can be sold to friends. By selling them at market prices you ought to earn enough to pay all your feed costs thereby having all the chicken you can eat at no cost.