FIVE YEARS AGO, after months of battling praedial larceny and attacks on his free-range rabbits, Dave Brome decided to enter the poultry industry.
Explaining his decision to ditch rabbits, he said: “At the time, the public road was not raised and the rabbits wouldn’t go over to the road because they had to hop over a hill, but people used to shoot them and try to catch them and carry them way, and putting the bucks on the does was too time-consuming.
“So after that I decided to get into poultry.”
Brome, who started farming as a young boy tending to sheep, now tends to nearly 3 000 layers on his two-acre farm at Friendship, St Lucy.
Although less stressful than raising free-range rabbits, rearing poultry required vigilance, especially with new chicks.
“If you mess up during the first seven days [of a chick’s life], there is no coming back, because the birds are not going to grow as they should,” he told These Fields And Hills.
“You need to make sure you keep them really warm and ensure they get the right antibiotics and vitamins.
“When the chicks come from the hatchery they are almost dehydrated. Most of the time they hatched a day or two before they are collected. After hatching, a bird can live for up to two days without eating, so as soon as they get to you they must be fed.
“You have to make sure the place they are staying is properly sanitised and the area needs to be airtight. The chicks should also be given a treatment on the seventh and 14th days,” he said.
The 49-year-old said that trimming the upper mandible (top portion of the beak) of pullets (hens under a year old) was necessary.
“At 12 weeks the beaks get cut under the cuticle by the nose so the top is shorter than the bottom. Birds can pick up the colour red really easy and anything red they would pick at.
“When a chicken goes to lay, when the inside comes out it looks red and other chickens would pick at it; one pick would cause it to bleed and the chickens would pick it to death. So if you cut the beak, you prevent them from picking each other.”
The farmer also advised cutting the upper mandible when the chicken was 16 to 20 weeks to prevent it from going into shock and laying late.
Brome’s 84-year-old father, Charles Brome, helps on the farm between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. (SB)