Keeping your chicks safe and healthy after receiving them from Hoover’s Hatchery is your number one concern, and it’s ours too! We want you to be successful flock owners and enjoy every minute that you have chicks in your care. We have some great tips and products to keep those chicks safe and healthy from the brooder phase all the way to the coop phase.
Brooding Areas
When first receiving chicks, make sure they have a deeply bedded brooding area with large wood shavings. This will ensure that droppings and dirty water from the waterer don’t cause too much moisture in the brooding area as often. It will help keep the ammonia smell down and you won’t feel like you need to change the bedding daily. Give the bedding a few sprays with Chick Fresh, a product from Coop Clean, before putting the chicks in to keep ahead of the smells that a brooder can accumulate.
Chicks need heat for the first few weeks of life to ensure that they are warm while they grow in their larger feathers. The heat that the lamps give off inside the brooder can make the bedding a little smellier. Stay ahead of the game by ensuring the waterers are up off the bedding by a few inches or use a hanging waterer in the brooder. Hanging waterers are becoming a more popular option when it comes to watering chicks and chickens. You can find these at your local Tractor Supply or farm store. The hanging waterers keep the water in the bedding down to a minimum and the chicks have less of a chance to get into the water to get their down wet making them cold.
Chicken Coops
As chicks get older and grow out their brooding areas they get moved out to
the coops. No matter the size of your coops bedding, droppings are always a
constant chore to keep clean. Deeply bedding the coops and changing out the
bedding often are highly encouraged to keep the ammonia down. Ammonia can have
dangerous effects on the respiratory systems of animals. High ammonia levels
can lead to bacterial respiratory infection and especially E. Coli infections. Coop conditions would have to be extreme for
sicknesses to occur but it’s always good to keep in mind these things can
happen. Keeping coops well ventilated and bedding clean will ensure healthy
chickens.
When changing bedding, spraying Chick Fresh on the bedding is a great preventative measure to stay ahead of the ammonia smell. It’s an anti-microbial that has proven to reduce dangerous ammonia in coops and keep the area smelling fresh. Naturally safe microbes in Chick Fresh consume the urea and other odor causing compounds found in litter, making our product safe and environmentally friendly. Chick Fresh has unmatched control of odors caused by litter, bedding, old feed, animal urine, manure, and dirt. Chick Fresh is safe and easy to use.
Chick Fresh “pays for its self” and will: prolong the life of your animals, help maintain healthier living conditions, promote more productive egg laying, allow you to raise healthier and more productive animals, and delivers a more compost friendly waste for gardens. For best results, spray daily around coop floor where odors develop. Also spray walls, nests, roosting areas and especially around wetter damp areas.
Our team at Hoover’s believes there is no other product on the market that does as better of a job protecting your bird’s respiratory system and keeping your chick and chicken areas safe and smelling great.
You can find Chick Fresh by Coop Clean at your local Tractor Supply store or online at https://flextraninc.com/animal-care/products/chick-fresh.php
Phil holmes
March 16, 2019I highly recommend use of zeolite for ammonia control. We love at 8000 ft altitude and our flock not infrequently in the winter are confined to the chicken house because of deep snow Although deep straw bedding is changed as needed damp and poop loaded bedding is a challenge all winter. I buy zeolite at a pool supply house for $35/40lbs. It’s unaffordable in little plastic bottles at retailers.