One major cause of economic loss in poultry farms is the death of birds. The moment a poultry farm is recording a high mortality rate before the end of a production cycle, the owner shouldn’t expect an encouraging profit—if not a loss—after sales. Economic loss due to mortality can be avoided or reduced to the minimum. It is very possible. The following tips will reveal how it can be achieved:
1. Always wash drinkers and replace the leftover water.
Make sure you wash the drinkers or drinking trough of your birds every morning and replace the water with clean and cool one. Don’t use chlorinated water or water from a stream or river that you don’t know its source. Also, ensure that you rinse off the drinkers to avoid re-contaminating the fresh water with soaps or detergents. Note: Please don’t ever discard leftover water around the pens. If you do, you’re signaling to soldier ants to pay your birds a visit. So discard leftover feeds and water far away from the production pens
2. Serve water before feeds Birds are different from humans or other animals. You must always serve them water before you serve them feeds, especially if you’re on a deep-litter system. This is to avoid stampeding as the chickens struggle for feeds at the same point. ALSO READ: Reasons for Keeping or Raising Animals
3. Avoid serving moldy feeds It is dangerous and risky to serve moldy feeds to your birds. Don’t do it. It is just like giving them poison. Moldy feeds can make your birds to become sick or have disease(s).
4. Strictly follow medication and vaccination schedule strictly.
You need to get the right vaccination and medication schedule of the poultry species you’re raising. This helps in immunizing your birds against some poultry killer diseases like Newcastle Diseases (ND), Fowl Pox, Fowl Typhoid, Gumboro Disease, Avian encephalomyelitis (AE or Epidemic Tremor), Marek’s Disease, etc. Medication such as dewormer and antibiotics are very important to the health of your chickens and other poultry species.
5. Collect and raise healthy chicks Most of the health problems faced by birds are as a result of a poor genetic background or early life. Some chickens are the product of poor parents. Some egg hatcheries are not reputable as they raise poor parent stocks to produce fertile eggs, or they buy eggs from bad and problematic parent stock farms. There are some poultry farmers who never make any attempts to know the source of eggs of a particular hatchery they are buying chicks from, hence they collect and raise problematic chicks.
6. Prevent ammonia build up When the litter in the poultry pen is left for a very long time, it gives rooms for increased production of ammonium gas, which will definitely choke your chickens, turkey, quail, etc. to death. So always remove wet or caked litters from pens and replace with new litters as soon as possible to avoid birds’ mortality due to choking or other respiratory problems. ALSO READ: Feed Formula Sample for Chick Mash There are hatcheries who don’t administer all the necessary vaccines such as Marek’s Disease Vaccine, Infectious Bronchitis vaccine (IBV) before distributing chicks to customers, thus exposing the future of those chicks to danger. Note: Always purchase your chicks from a very reputable hatchery. It is very important that you ask the officer in charge if they have given the chicks the necessary vaccines with proofs.
7. Build a predator-proof poultry The pen houses of your chickens should not be accessible to predators like foxes, hyenas, wild cats, rats and mice, snakes, hawks, etc. Make sure you install strong iron mesh nets round the pens and apply predator repellents. If you allow these predators to penetrate into your flock, they will kill and/or eat the number of birds they are capable of doing justice to.
8. Maintain proper hygiene and sanitation This is a somewhat wide topic, but the most important thing is that you should maintain proper hygiene and sanitation in and around your poultry farm. You should also take biosecurity serious as this is one thing most livestock farmers don’t take seriously until diseases are introduced into their farm. Click to read more about Health management and biosecurity
9. Supply sufficient feed to your birds I haven’t read or heard it anywhere that underfed animals grow well and produce excellently. Underfed birds are closer to their graves because they will always have low body weights and poor immune responses, and such birds will die sooner. So ensure you give enough feed and avoid overfeeding, which could lead to another problem.
