Brooding Day-Old Chicks: Weeks 1 to 4 in a Philippine Backyard

• The day before. Preheat the brooder and hold temperature and humidity steady 24 hours ahead.
• Day 0. Chicks onto paper, feed already measured onto it, nothing more than 2 m from feed or water.
• Hours 2 to 24. Crop fill, checked by hand at 2, 4, 8, 12 and 24 hours.
• Days 1 to 3. The brightest light of the batch, stepping down from day 3.
• Day 3. Start widening the ring.
• Days 4 to 7. Feed moves off the paper onto the main feeders, trays out by day 7.
• Day 7. Weigh them. The ring comes out at day 7 in a closed house, day 10 to 12 in an open-sided one.
• Days 11 to 16. No whole pellets before day 11, the whole house by day 14 to 16.
• Day 28. Still a chick: DA Administrative Order No. 12 s. 2002 § 3.6 runs the definition to 30 days.

Sequence from the Ross Broiler Management Handbook 2025 and the Cobb Broiler Management Guide 2021, except where the Philippine order is named.

Ang mahirap sa unang apat na linggo ay ang pagkakasunod: maikli ang oras sa bawat hakbang at wala kang mababalikan. Two breeder manuals and one Philippine order supply those dates, and where they disagree this page prints both. Wala ritong temperatura: nasa hiwalay na pahina ang mga degrees.

The box that arrives is ₱1,675 of stock with a 72-hour clock on it

Day-old chicks were at ₱33.50 per head on 13 July 2026, so 50 of them is ₱1,675 standing at your gate. That BAI monitoring figure is integrator level, a floor rather than a backyard quote.

The clock on it is Philippine and binding. DA Administrative Order No. 12 s. 2002 § 17.7 requires hatchlings “brooded within seventy-two (72) hours of hatching”, and § 18.8 day-old chicks brooded “as soon as possible after delivery” with fresh water available. Hindi ito payo mula sa manual sa ibang bansa, ito ang batas na sakop ka.

The same order describes the box: § 18.2 gives a standard carton of 16.5 by 52 by 62.5 cm “capable of holding 100-day old chicks”. Divide that floor by the 100 chicks the clause names and each bird gets 32.5 cm², against the § 18.5 transport minimum of “not less than 25 square centimeters per bird”. It agrees with itself there, with thirty per cent to spare. Light is where it does not.

Delivery timing is regulated in a hot country’s terms: § 18.3 wants deliveries “done during the night when the climate is cooler”, and Aviagen reaches the same instruction for growers without environmentally controlled vehicles. It also asks that chicks under 35 g at day-old, or from donor flocks under 30 weeks, be brooded separately with supplementary feed and water. § 17.7 carries the harder line in the same breath as the 72-hour rule: weak, deformed and unthrifty birds are culled and destroyed humanely.

Ihanda ang kahon bago dumating ang sisiw

Aviagen wants the space preheated and stable “at least 24 hours prior to the arrival of chicks”, at 60 to 70% relative humidity, and publishes floor and litter temperatures beside the air figure. Those degrees belong to the brooder-temperature page, not here.

Feed goes down before the chicks do, and it is the instruction the two manuals are furthest apart on. Aviagen measures approximately 40 g of feed per chick onto paper immediately before placement, a 2 mm sieved crumble, the paper covering at least 70% of the brooding area, with trays at one per 100 chicks. Cobb puts 75 to 100 g per chick on paper for full-house brooding, and for partial-house 75% floor coverage with a minimum 75 chicks per supplementary feeder. Halos doble ang isa sa isa, sa iisang araw. The low figure risks a chick finding bare paper; the high one risks feed going stale under birds that cannot finish it.

Read the equipment placement out of the section below, not the temperature label.

Under the paper is the litter. Cobb gives a depth per material rather than one number for all of them, which nothing else in this corpus does.

Two of those rows are Philippine: ipa ang kadalasang pinakamurang bedding sa agrivet, at lupa ang sahig ng maraming kulungan sa bakuran. Cobb calls rice hulls “an inexpensive option in some areas” and “a good litter alternative” at 5 cm, exactly the depth the one Philippine brooding trial used, then doubles it on a dirt floor. The coop pillar prints the four-source spread on depth and carries that trial, where the chicks ate the rice hull instead of the feed. The bedding most keepers reach for arrives with a manual endorsing it and a Philippine result warning about it.

Depth is the easy half. Cobb wants moisture under 35%: squeeze a handful, and a clump that holds together is too wet.

Ilang sisiw ang kasya sa isang metro kuwadrado?

Cobb answers by day band rather than by week, the shape a brooder actually changes in.

Brood chamber stocking density, Cobb Broiler Management Guide 2021. Both columns are Cobb’s.

The same guide splits its day-0 figure by season, the one line in either manual written as though somebody pictured a tropical placement. Stocking “should not exceed more than 50 to 60 birds/m² during the winter and 40 to 50 birds/m² during the summer”, with a note to “ensure adequate drinking space, especially during summer placements”. Walang taglamig dito, kaya isang hilera lang ang babasahin mo, buong taon.

Aviagen comes at it through spot brooding and lands elsewhere: 1,000 chicks in a 5 by 5 m space, or 40 chicks per m² on day 1. For 50 chicks that is 1.25 m² of floor against 0.83 m² at the tight end of Cobb’s days 0 to 3 row, both divisions this page’s, and beside the 1.16 m² that the brooder page works out for the same 50 chicks the three land within a hand’s width.

The Philippine number is one, and eight times looser. Pampanga State Agricultural University brooded native chicks at 7 chicks per m², 28 birds a pen, in the trial the coop pillar carries. The DA AO 12 appendices carrying floor space are broiler breeder tables at 5 pullets per m², and the Philippine standards that do set density start at the grown bird. The gap is on the register.

Water is the equipment decision, and nobody publishes the litres

Aviagen gives drinking space during brooding as three ratios: 8 bell drinkers per 1,000 chicks, or 125 chicks each; 10 to 12 birds per nipple; 12 mini-drinkers or trays per 1,000 chicks. DA AO 12 Appendix I is looser, asking for “at least 1 nipple for every 20 chicks” from the first day, one drinking point and one feeding point per 50 to 70 chicks, and one brooder per 500 chicks with a surround 2.5 m across. Twenty chicks a nipple is roughly half the nipple count Aviagen wants. It also asks for corrugated paper under the drinking lines with feed scattered on it, to pull the chicks toward the water.

Volume is where a keeper is on their own. Cobb gives “1 ml/bird per hour for the first twenty four hours after placement” and nothing per week after. Aviagen publishes a ratio: at 21 °C, birds are drinking enough when litres of water to kilograms of feed stays close to 1.6 to 1.8. Neither prints the litres-per-100-chicks table a keeper would use.

So this page computed one, as arithmetic rather than a published figure. The Ross 308 performance objectives put cumulative feed intake at 2,051 g a bird by day 28, so 50 chicks eat 102.6 kg, about two 50-kg sacks, and at the 1.6 to 1.8 ratio that is 164 to 185 litres of water over the same four weeks. Both rest on a 21 °C basis, so read them as a floor: Aviagen’s tropical note, which the coop pillar works through, has prolonged high temperatures doubling daily consumption.

The last of it is the part a GI roof decides for you: Aviagen puts consumption falling above 30 °C and birds refusing to drink above 44 °C, and asks for nipple lines flushed twice daily for the first three or four days. Mainit ang tubig sa ilalim ng bubong, at hindi iinom ang sisiw sa ganoon.

The one Philippine document with day-one numbers in it disagrees with itself

Appendix III of DA Administrative Order No. 12 s. 2002 prints two light programmes. Here is the one for dark rearing and dark production houses.

Now § 7.1 of the same order: day-old chicks “shall be provided with enough light especially during their first three (3) days in order for them to find food and water. Initially a minimum light intensity of 40 lux is recommended.” Forty on day one, against its own appendix printing sixty. One document, two answers, on the first measurable decision after the box is opened.

Both figures sit at or above the minimum either manual sets. Cobb sets 25 lux as the brooding minimum, at chick height in the darkest part of the house. Aviagen asks for at least 30 to 40 lux in whole-house brooding and 80 to 100 lux under spot brooders. So neither Philippine figure clears a spot brooder, and both are still the only ones a keeper here is governed by.

The caveat does not dissolve the contradiction. Appendix III is headed for dark rearing and dark production houses, which reads as breeder territory; § 7.1 is the general welfare clause covering any day-old chick in the country. So the operative Philippine figure is 40 lux for the first three days, and the appendix is evidence the drafters had a brighter number in mind for the same bird. Iyon ang susundin ko, kasi iyon ang sugnay na sakop ang lahat ng sisiw.

The hours disagree too. Aviagen wants 23 hours of light and one hour of dark from placement, building to 4 to 6 hours of darkness by day 7, so a power cut does not meet a flock that has never seen the dark. Cobb wants 24 hours on day 1, then the lights off for one hour on the second night, after which “the off time must never change for the life of the flock”. Cobb drops to 5 to 10 lux when birds reach 130 to 180 g, Aviagen after day 7.

Two more Philippine lines: § 7.2 allows 10 lux for night inspection, and § 17.8 requires brooded birds inspected “at least twice every twenty four (24) hours”. Dalawang beses bawat araw, nakasulat sa batas.

Day 7 is a weigh-in, and days 10 to 16 are the release

Both manuals turn day 7 into a number and set the bar differently: Aviagen at a minimum of 4.5 times the chick’s weight at placement, Cobb at 4.8 times. Aviagen’s own performance table clears both: 44 g at day-old against 213 g at day 7 is 4.84 times, this page dividing two figures the same document never puts together. Nasa ilalim pala ng sarili nitong talaan ang minimum ng dalawang manual.

Cobb says why the gram matters: “Every extra gram gained by day 7 can result in a cumulative increase of 6 to 7 g at 35 days.” Aviagen weighs birds individually, a minimum of 1% or 100 birds whichever is larger, and calculates uniformity as a CV%. Sa 50 sisiw, lahat sila iyon. A CV of about 6% at day-old rising to about 10% by day 7 points at brooding practice rather than at the chicks.

The ring comes off on a date that depends on the building, and Aviagen is the only source in this corpus that says so: expand it gradually from day 3, remove it from day 7 in closed houses, though it “may need to stay in place until 10-12 days of age in open-sided houses”. Ang kulungan sa bakuran ay open-sided halos palagi, kaya ang huling petsa ang basahin mo. The coop pillar carries the older dispute, where one extension service says day 7 and another two to four weeks.

Feeding moves on its own schedule: main system gradually from day 4 to 5, complete by day 6 to 7, no full 3 to 4 mm pellets before day 11. Cobb closes the sequence by opening the building, giving chickens “access to the entire house after 14 to 16 days old”, and after that what a kilo of liveweight costs to grow takes over.

Ilan ba talaga ang normal na mamatay sa unang linggo?

Cobb gives a target: cumulative 7-day mortality “should not exceed 1%”. Even the sector it was written for does not average it.

The largest measurement of what actually happens is Spanish, and has to be read as Spanish every time. Yerpes, Llonch and Manteca (2020), in Animals 10(2):310, followed 2,267 flocks and 70,211,678 chicks across 104 farms in Spain between 2015 and 2018. Mean first-week mortality was 1.82% (±0.99%), from 0.13% at the 5th percentile to 2.25% at the 95th, with Spanish risk factors attached: breeder flocks aged 51 to 68 weeks carried 26% higher risk, and winter and autumn placements were worst of all.

Hold the two together and the reading is uncomfortable. A batch losing 2% in week one has missed Cobb’s target and sits inside the ordinary spread of 70 million Spanish chicks. Wala akong Philippine figure na maihahambing dito. The nearest Philippine numbers are something else: Ancog and colleagues’ brooding-phase losses of 4.5% and 0.9%, taken across a whole brooding period, and the 17.86% to 78.57% spread in the Pampanga trial, which compares treatments on 28-bird pens. The gap is on the register.

Crop fill at 24 hours tells you which thing went wrong

Everything above is a setting chosen before the birds arrive. One check tells you whether those settings worked, while the answer can still be acted on.

Aviagen publishes it as a ladder: 75% of chicks with a full crop at 2 hours after placement, 80% at 4 hours, over 80% at 8 hours, over 85% at 12 hours, over 95% at 24 hours. Sample 30 to 40 chicks at three or four places and palpate each crop; one that has found both feed and water has a crop that is full, soft and rounded. Cobb runs two checks on 100 chicks per brooding area: at least 85% with both feed and water present at 8 hours, at least 95% filled at 24 hours.

It separates the two faults. Cobb’s fault tree: if more than 15% of crops are hard, evaluate water availability, water temperature and flow rate; if more than 15% are soft, evaluate feed availability, feed location and feed presentation. Aviagen adds a third reading from the same finger, that a crop which is full but still shows the original texture of the crumble belongs to a bird that has eaten and has not drunk enough. Matigas, tubig ang mali. Malambot, feeds ang mali.

Nothing else in the first four weeks does that job. A day-7 weigh-in tells you the batch went badly and cannot tell you why. A mortality count tells you what it cost. The lux figure, the density row, the litter depth and the drinker ratio were chosen before the chicks arrived, and by the time any of them shows in a weight it is week 2 and the feed is bought. Crop fill runs at hour 2 and again at hour 24, and it names the fault while the fix is still moving a drinker, flushing a line or scattering feed on the paper.

Aviagen’s troubleshooting table puts the threshold plainly: fewer than 75 to 80% of chicks with adequate crop fill in the first 2 to 4 hours is a named cause of small chicks on days 1 to 4. So if you check once, check at 24 hours. If fewer than 95 of every 100 crops you palpate are full and soft, that is not a slow start. It is a fault with a name today and no name tomorrow, at sa araw na iyon ang daliri mo ang pinakamurang kagamitan sa bakuran.

Questions people actually ask

How do I know if day-old chicks have started eating and drinking?

Palpate their crops. Aviagen publishes a five-point ladder for it in the Ross Broiler Management Handbook 2025: 75 percent of chicks with a full crop at 2 hours after placement, 80 percent at 4 hours, over 80 percent at 8 hours, over 85 percent at 12 hours and over 95 percent at 24 hours. Sample 30 to 40 chicks at three or four places in the brooder; a chick that has found both feed and water has a crop that is full, soft and rounded. Cobb-Vantress asks for a minimum of 85 percent with both feed and water present at 8 hours and a minimum of 95 percent at 24 hours, sampling 100 chicks per brooding area. If the crop is full but the original texture of the crumble is still apparent, Aviagen says the bird has not yet drunk enough.

How much space does a day-old chick need in a brooder? Show the answer

Cobb-Vantress publishes a brood-chamber density that tightens by day band: 55 to 60 birds per square metre on days 0 to 3, 40 to 45 on days 4 to 6, 30 to 35 on days 7 to 9 and 20 to 25 on days 10 to 12. Its own table also splits by season, allowing 50 to 60 birds per square metre in winter and 40 to 50 in summer, so a country with no winter reads the lower row all year. Aviagen gives a different shape for spot brooding, 40 chicks per square metre on day 1, worked from 1,000 chicks in a 5 by 5 metre space. No Philippine body publishes a brooder floor-space figure for table chicks at all: the appendices of DA Administrative Order No. 12 s. 2002 cover broiler breeders rather than table birds.

How bright should the light be for day-old chicks in the Philippines? Show the answer

The Philippine document says two different things. Section 7.1 of DA Administrative Order No. 12 s. 2002 recommends a minimum light intensity of 40 lux for the first three days, while Appendix III of the same order prints 60 lux on days 1 and 2, 40 on day 3 and a step down to 5 lux by day 8. Both figures sit at or above the minimum either breeder manual sets: Cobb-Vantress asks for a minimum of 25 lux at chick height in the darkest part of the house during brooding, and Aviagen asks for 30 to 40 lux in whole-house brooding, or 80 to 100 lux under spot brooders, so neither Philippine figure clears a spot brooder. Appendix III is headed for dark rearing and dark production houses, which reads as breeder territory, though section 7.4 points the general lighting clause at it. Section 7.1 is the general clause that covers any day-old chick.

What is a normal first-week death rate for chicks? Show the answer

It depends whose figure you use, and the two available disagree. Cobb-Vantress states that cumulative 7-day mortality should not exceed 1 percent. The largest measurement of what actually happens is Spanish rather than Philippine: Yerpes, Llonch and Manteca (2020), in Animals 10(2):310, followed 2,267 flocks and 70,211,678 chicks across 104 farms in Spain between 2015 and 2018 and found a mean first-week mortality of 1.82 percent, ranging from 0.13 percent at the 5th percentile to 2.25 percent at the 95th. That is a temperate, largely controlled sector, so it is a benchmark and not a Philippine expectation. No Philippine agency publishes a first-week mortality figure for chicks.