Breeding, Brooding, and Flock Health

This unit covers reproduction, chick production, and everyday flock health and management—moving from selecting breeding stock and mating methods to incubation, brooding, and early chick care. Students will also learn biosecurity, disease recognition and treatment, pest and predator control, egg handling and quality assessment, and humane/operational preparations for processing or ongoing production.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze breed characteristics, mating methods (natural and artificial), and reproductive behavior to select appropriate stock and design a breeding and incubation plan that meets production goals.
• Demonstrate incubation setup and monitoring and brooding practices—including setting eggs, candling, hatch management, brooder environment control, and chick feeding/watering protocols—according to established standards.
• Apply flock health, sanitation, pest-control, and biosecurity procedures to recognize, prevent, and respond to common diseases and to administer medications safely and appropriately.
• Evaluate egg collection, cleaning, storage, egg-quality criteria, housing amenities, predator-protection and humane handling practices and prepare an operational checklist for butchering or ongoing egg/meat production.