Feeder and Drinker Space for Chicks: How Much Is Enough?

Put 100 day-old chicks around one feed tray and only the nearest ones eat, while the rest wait, climb over each other or give up and go back to the heat. Nothing looks wrong at that moment. The cost shows three or four weeks later, when the same house holds big birds, average birds and a tail of small ones that never caught up, although every bird was offered the same feed from the same bag.

Feeder and drinker space means the length of rim or trough, or the number of nipples, that birds can use at the same moment. It is one of the cheapest things on a farm to get right and one of the commonest reasons a flock grows unevenly. Below are working figures by age for broilers and pullets, and the signs that tell you the birds disagree with your arithmetic.

Count centimetres of rim, not feeders

Chickens eat as a group. After a feeder is refilled or the morning light comes up, most of the flock wants to eat within the same few minutes. If there is room for only half of them, the stronger birds eat first and longest, and the timid ones get what is left. Over a six-week broiler cycle that small daily difference becomes several hundred grams of body weight.

So the useful measure is the length of feeding edge per bird. For a straight trough that birds can reach from both sides, count both sides: a 1.2 metre trough gives 240 cm of space. For a round feeder, the edge is the circumference of the pan, which is the diameter multiplied by 3.14. A tube feeder with a 40 cm pan has about 125 cm of rim. One with a 30 cm pan has about 94 cm, a quarter less, although the two can look similar in the shop.

Birds around a circle fan outwards like the spokes of a wheel, so they pack closer than birds standing shoulder to shoulder along a trough. That is why a round pan needs fewer centimetres per bird. Measure the pan before you buy, and see our comparison of trays, tubes, troughs and automatic feeder lines for which type suits which flock size.

Feeder space by age: working figures

These figures suit open-sided, deep-litter houses where feeders are filled by hand. Breed company manuals quote minimums that allow more birds per feeder, but they assume a closed house and automatic pans topped up all day. In a hot house, where birds crowd their eating into the cool hours and a feeder may stand empty before the next round, extra space is cheap insurance.

Read the table from the oldest age your birds will reach. Chicks grow into the space, so the number of feeders you need on the day of sale is the number to own on the day the chicks arrive. When you book chicks from Halaal Farms Ghana, the hatch date is confirmed before you pay, which gives you a fixed day by which every tray, fount and feeder should be washed and in the house.

Capacity matters as well as rim. A finishing broiler eats between 150 and 200 grams of feed a day, so 30 birds clear 5 to 6 kg from one feeder. A tube that holds 5 kg is empty before evening unless somebody refills it, and rim space is only real while there is feed behind it.

Drinker space by age

Water space is less forgiving than feed space, because a bird that cannot drink stops eating as well. In mild weather birds drink about twice the weight of the feed they eat, and on a hot afternoon a good deal more.

The first week

Use at least two chick drinkers (founts) for every 100 chicks, and three per 100 for the first three days if you have them. Founts of 2 to 4 litres suit this age. The water channel is too shallow for a chick to get soaked or drown, and the small volume forces you to change the water often.

Distance matters more than number at this stage. A chick just out of the box does not yet know what water is, and it will not go searching. No chick should have to walk more than about a metre to reach a drinker during the first days. Spread the founts evenly between the feed trays, at the edge of the warm zone and not directly under the heat. The full layout is in our guide to setting up a brooder ring with feeders, drinkers and litter.

From week two onwards

• Hanging bell drinkers: breed guides allow about 8 per 1,000 birds, which is one per 125. In a hot open-sided house we suggest one per 70 to 80 birds.
• Hand-filled round drinkers of 8 to 12 litres: one per 50 birds as a starting point, then check the volume as shown below.
• Nipple drinkers: 10 to 12 birds per nipple for broilers and pullets, and nearer 8 to 10 for heavy broilers in the hottest months.
• Open water troughs: 2 to 2.5 cm per bird, counting both sides.

For hand-filled drinkers, do the volume sum as well. A hundred broilers at five weeks can drink 40 litres or more on a hot day. Two 10-litre drinkers hold 20 litres between them, so they must be refilled at least three times, and one missed round in the afternoon leaves the flock dry at the worst hour. Either add drinkers or fix the refilling times and hold to them. The choice of system is covered in our comparison of nipple and bell drinkers.

Where you put them matters as much as how many

Ten feeders lined along one wall do not give the same access as ten feeders spread across the floor. Weak birds will not push through a mass of bigger ones to cross a crowded house.

• Set feeders and drinkers in alternating rows down the length of the house, so that from any feeder there is a drinker within one to two metres.
• After brooding, no bird should be more than two to three metres from both feed and water.
• Keep the outer row at least half a metre in from the walls. Birds like to rest along the walls, and resting birds block access for the others.
• Do not leave drinkers where the afternoon sun reaches through the mesh. Birds avoid warm water, and algae grow faster in it.

On hot afternoons birds drift to the breezier side of the house and stay there. If that side has fewer drinkers, space per bird falls sharply in the hours when water is needed most. Stand in the house at two in the afternoon, see where the birds are, and move equipment to match.

Moving from trays to tube feeders without a setback

Trays and feed on paper exist because a day-old chick pecks at what it stands on. Flat, open feed gets every chick eating within hours. By the end of the first week the same trays are a problem: chicks stand in them, scratch feed into the litter and leave droppings in it. How the move to tube feeders is done decides whether the smallest chicks keep up.

1. Day 1 to 3: feed on trays, and on clean paper around them. Put down small amounts and top up four or five times a day. Fresh feed dropping onto a tray draws chicks to eat. One large heap goes stale and gets trampled.
2. Day 3 or 4: lift the paper out before it becomes damp and dirty. Trays stay.
3. Day 4 or 5: set the tube feeder pans on the litter beside the trays, either the pan alone or the full feeder at its lowest setting, filled so that feed is visible at the rim. Chicks may climb in at first, which does no harm while they learn where the feed now is.
4. Day 7 to 12: take away about a third of the trays every day or two. Before each removal, check that chicks are eating from the pans. Feel the crops of ten small chicks in the evening. If they are full and soft, continue. If several are empty, stop removing trays and find out why.
5. By day 12 to 14: all feed is in tube feeders, and the feeders are lifted off the litter onto their hangers.

Handle drinkers the same way. With nipple lines, chicks should have the nipples from day one at eye height, with founts as a supplement for the first three to five days.

Height: the adjustment most farms forget

The right height for a feeder or an open drinker is with the lip level with the birds' backs. At that height a bird reaches in comfortably, but it cannot rake feed out with its beak, scratch litter into the pan or foul the water. Feeders left on the floor after the second week waste part of every bag, as our article on reducing feed wastage explains.

Too high is the worse mistake. If the lip is set for the biggest birds, the smallest cannot reach, and the birds that most need to catch up are the ones locked out. Set the height to the back of an average bird, then look for the smallest birds in the house and confirm that they can eat and drink without stretching on their toes.

• How often: broilers grow so quickly that hanging equipment needs raising every two or three days. For pullets, a weekly check is enough after the first month.
• Fill level: keep feed in the pan about one third to half deep. A pan filled to the brim loses feed over the edge every time a bird flicks its beak.
• Hand-filled drinkers: stand them on a flat block or a low stand from the second week, so that litter stays out, and raise the stand as the birds grow.
• Bell drinkers: lip at back height and a shallow depth of water in the channel once birds are past brooding. Deep water slops onto the litter each time the drinker swings.
• Nipples: at eye level for the first two or three days, then raised step by step so that birds reach upwards with their feet flat on the litter. A nipple that birds must peck at from the side, or stoop under, is too low and will drip.

Litter is never level, so walk the full length of a row when you adjust it. A line that is correct at the door can be several centimetres too high at the far end, where the litter has been scratched away.

Signs that birds are competing for a place

The table is a starting point. The birds give the final answer if you watch in the first ten minutes after feeders are filled or the lights come on.

• Birds stand two or three deep behind those eating, or walk over their backs to get to the pan.
• Small birds hang back at the edge of the group and move in only when the others have left.
• Five minutes after filling, every feeder still has a full ring of birds and others are circling behind it.
• Fresh scratches appear on the backs and thighs of broilers, caused by the claws of birds climbing over them.
• The litter around a few drinkers is wet and trampled while the rest of the floor is dry, which shows too many birds using too few drinkers.
• In the evening, the big birds have full crops and many of the small ones have little in theirs.

One sign alone can have another cause. Two or three together mean the flock needs more places, a better spread of the ones it has, or more frequent filling.

When to give more than the table says

The hot months. From about February to April in most of Ghana, and for longer in the north, birds eat little between late morning and late afternoon. Their feeding is squeezed into the early morning and the evening, so more birds want the feeder at the same time. Give 20 to 30 per cent more feeder and drinker places than the table, and fill feeders in the evening so that birds can eat through the cool of the night and at first light.

Pullets on measured feed. Where growing pullets receive a weighed daily amount instead of feed on demand, every bird must be able to eat at the same moment, because the feed is gone within an hour or two. A bird with no place at the trough misses most of its ration that day. Here the upper figures in the table are the minimum.

Flocks that are already uneven. Small birds avoid large ones. Penning the smallest birds separately with their own feeders and drinkers for two or three weeks often brings them back.

Uniformity: the number that shows whether it worked

You cannot judge evenness by eye in a house of white broilers. Once a week, catch at least 50 birds from three or four places in the house, weigh each one individually and write every weight down. Then work through three steps.

1. Add the weights and divide by the number of birds to get the average.
2. Work out 10 per cent below and 10 per cent above the average. This is the band.
3. Count the birds inside the band and express them as a percentage of the sample.

As an example, suppose 60 three-week-old birds average 800 grams. The band runs from 720 to 880 grams. If 45 of the 60 fall inside it, uniformity is 75 per cent. For pullets, breed guides commonly look for 80 per cent or better through rearing. Mixed-sex broilers spread a little wider because males grow faster than females, so compare each batch with your own earlier batches and, above all, watch the direction. A figure that falls from one week to the next means some birds are being held back.

Evenness pays in practical ways. Broiler buyers want birds of similar size, and the small ones either sell at a discount or stay on the farm eating feed after the main sale. With pullets, feed changes and light stimulation are timed for the average bird, so the underweight tail comes into lay late and lays small eggs. Weekly target weights are in our guide to checking whether your broiler flock is on track.

Space is not the only cause of an uneven flock. Poor chick quality, a cold first week and diseases such as coccidiosis also leave small birds behind. It is simply the first thing to rule out, because it is quick to check and cheap to correct.

A worked equipment list for 500 broilers

Here is how the figures turn into a shopping list for one house of 500 broilers taken to six weeks.

For a batch that will finish in March or April, add three or four feeders and two more drinkers. For pullets, use the pullet rows of the feeder table and buy for the 18-week figure.

If the list comes to more than you can afford this cycle, the honest fix is to order fewer chicks, not to stretch the equipment. A feeder lasts for years, and it costs little beside the sale value lost on a tail of 20 or 30 undersized birds.

Settle equipment and chick numbers together, before the order goes in. At Halaal Farms Ghana the minimum order is one box of 50 chicks, so it is easy to match a batch to the feeders and drinkers you already own. Current prices for broiler chicks and layer chicks are on the price list, and the brooding side of the first two weeks is set out in our chick brooding guide. If you are unsure whether your house and equipment suit the number you have in mind, send the details through the order form or call 024 915 1503 and we will go through the sums with you before you pay for anything.

Questions farmers ask

Written by the Halaal Farms Ghana team. We hatch and import day-old chicks at Opeikuma, Kasoa, and deliver to all 16 regions. This article is general guidance for farmers. For diagnosis and treatment of sick birds, speak to a vet or your district veterinary office.

Share this article