LETS TAKE NOT OF THE FOLLOWING BELOW
- Provide the flock with adequate brooding temperature:
High and low brooding temperatures lead to high chick mortality. Hence, it is essential to provide your flock with a proper brooding temperature. Failure to do so can wreak havoc on your poultry farm.
- Protect your flock from cold weather:
Of course, even in your wildest dream, you would not want to see your chicks dying because of cold weather. So, it is important to supply them with heat during very cold weather. You can consider designing the pens in such a way that your birds are not exposed to extremely cold conditions.
- Keep drinkers and feeders clean:
Being a poultry owner is not an easy task. You need to take care of your flock and their needs to keep them healthy. Keeping your birds’ feeders and drinkers or drinking trough clean is very important. So, make sure you clean them every morning and discard any leftover water and feed. Also, do not fill drinkers with chlorinated water.
While discarding leftover water and feed, make sure you do it very far away from the pen. It will help you prevent soldier ants from invading your farm and killing your chickens.
- Minimize the risk of suffocating the chicks to death:
Birds can quickly suffocate and die when forced to move in the tight corner or inadequate temperature. In a very cold atmosphere, they huddle to keep themselves warm, due to which the birds can suffocate or suffer a fatal injury.
To avoid this, make sure that the brooding house’s temperature and humidity are at the right levels and uniform throughout the pen.
The best way to protect your birds from suffocating to death is to centralize the pen’s heat source. With the heat source in the middle, you can protect the birds from huddling.
Avoid entirely sudden loud noises around the birds. Birds get panic with a sudden loud noise due to which they pack together and suffocate.
Predators away from your farm. Birds get scared when they see predators, which leads to a panic-induced gathering that results in suffocation.
- Prevent your farm from infections and diseases:
Some diseases can be gruesome; they can wipe out your entire flock in a go. While some may not be so fatal but may affect the feed conversion ratio of the birds. So, it is crucial to keep checking your flock regularly.
In case you detect symptoms for any disease in a bird, immediately separate it from the flock and contact the vet to avoid further damage to your poultry.
- Don’t feed your birds with moldy feeds:
Moldy feeds can be dangerous and poisonous to your flock. Feeding your birds with moldy feed can lead to severe problems, such as poultry disease. The best way to avoid moldy feeds on your farm is to keep the feeds away from water. Also, do not store the feed in storage rooms with very high humidity.
Besides, don’t buy in bulk. Buy only that much that your birds will finish before the end of its shelf life. And check the expiry dates on the feed before making the purchase.
- Serve your birds water before feeds:
Serve your birds’ water before feeds; it will prevent your flock from stampeding while struggling for food. Birds tend to drink water slower than they peck on their feed. Serving water first will divert some of the birds’ attention to water, which will reduce the intensity of the struggle for feed.
- Keep your farm protected from predators:
It is imperative to keep predators away from your farm. However, you cannot ensure complete protection as some of the predators sneak in from the underneath or the roof.
The best way to keep more giant predators like dogs and cats from the range area is by using an electric fence.
For flying predators like hawks, crisscross a thin cord over the area to prevent them from flying in and out.
Besides, close all the holes around the farm and keep monitoring your farm for predators’ signs. You can even install strong iron mesh nets around the pens and apply predator repellents regularly.
- Regularly clean dirty poultry pens:
It is essential to clean your filthy poultry pens regularly. Ammonia starts to build up in the pen when the litter is wet or when it is left unattended for a long time. This ammonia gas can be hazardous to your birds.
When it exceeds 25 ppm, it leads to severe problems, like stress, inadequate feed intake, irritation of the eyes and nasal membrane, slow growth rate, and respiratory diseases like coryza, bronchitis, etc.
Thus, it is essential to remove wet or caked litter from pens to prevent your birds from mortality due to choking or other respiratory problems.
- Supply sufficient feed to your birds:
The improper or insufficient feed can lead to poor growth and development of your birds. When underfed, birds
have low body weights and poor immune responses, due to which they fall sick easily. Likewise, overfeeding can also lead to more significant problems. That is why it is vital to give them enough feed.
- Strictly follow medication and vaccination schedules:
Following medication and vaccination is a good farm practice that can help each poultry farm owner greatly. By following medication and vaccination, you can keep endemic disease outbreaks at bay.
Make sure you get your birds are vaccinated against contagious diseases like Colibacillosis, Newcastle Diseases (ND), Fowl Typhoid, Chicken Anaemia Virus Infection, Gumboro Disease, Fowl Pox, etc.
Talk to your vet and get the right vaccination and medication schedule for the poultry species you’re raising. You can also keep a stock of the medicines at the farm to reduce chick mortality.
- Have a vet regularly check your flock:
Have a vet regularly checking your flock of chicken to ensure there are no symptoms of contagious diseases. Remove the recovered one from the flock as recovered birds are a reservoir of infection. This way, you can keep your other birds safe and healthy.
Author: Mujuni Henry
JUNIITV
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