In tropical countries like Nigeria, hot weather is a common problem where temperature can rise above 30oC. It is a well-known fact that hot weather leads to poor performance in birds. It leads to low feed consumption and high water intake. Layers under hot weather will lay fewer eggs, grow slower, easily get sick (think Newcastle disease), lay small eggs, watery eggs and eggs with thin shells. In broilers, growth rates, feed efficiency, immunity and carcass quality will be negatively affected. In breeders, egg hatchability is negatively affected.
For optimum performance, chickens require a temperature and humidity range of 18-24°C (65-80°F.) and 60-80% relative humidity. For every 1oC lower than 20oC, the bird will consume extra 1.5g of feed per day (5). When temperature rises above 24oC, egg weight and shell quality tend to suffer.
Signs of Heat Stress
Signs of a heat-stressed bird are panting, holding the wings out,
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To produce biogas, you need organic matters like animal manure, animal wastes and plant matters. These organic matters added to the biogas digester are called feedstock. Every organic matter has a carbon-nitrogen (C/N) ratio. For proper biogas production, the C/N ratio of the feedstock mix should be between 20 and 30. Micro-organisms in the biogas digester feed on carbon (as carbohydrates) and nitrogen (as protein, nitrates, ammonia, etc.) to produce biogas. They use carbon as an energy source and nitrogen for building cell structures. These organisms use up carbon about 30 times faster than they use nitrogen so they require a carbon-nitrogen ratio closer to 30. Let’s look at what happens if your feedstock mix does not meet this ratio.
C/N Ratio too Low (Too much nitrogen): If there is too much nitrogen, the carbon will be exhausted first and biogas production will stop. The remaining nitrogen will be lost
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An anaerobic digester – also called a biogas digester or simply a digester – is an air-tight chamber that is used to produce biogas and a rich organic fertilizer called digestate. When you feed organic materials (also called feedstock, raw slurry etc.) like animal manure or plant wastes into an anaerobic digester, it will decompose in the absence of air to produce the two products previously mentioned.
The act of decomposing in the absence of air is called anaerobic digestion or simply digestion. So we can say that the anaerobic digester is digesting the feedstock fed into it. In this article, we’re going to focus only on the popular types of digesters.
Digesters are generally classified into batch-type and continuously-fed digesters base on the type of feeding/loading.
A. Batch-type Digester: In this type of digester, the feedstock is loaded into the digester and left there until anaerobic digestion is complete
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Probiotics are beneficial organisms like bacteria and yeast that are believed to improve health when consumed. In case you don’t know, both plant and animals need these beneficial microbes to stay healthy. In fact, without the teeming good bacteria in the intestine of man and animals, digestion will not occur. The digestive system of man contains about 500 different types of bacteria. Apart from the benefits to plant and animals, you can also use this probiotics to reduce foul odor in animal houses, homes etc. it can also help to free clogged drains. The good bacteria in probiotics eat up bad bacteria that cause smell and diseases. Personally, I have not tried making probiotics so I have to give credit to who credit it due. I got these ideas from Patrick Gentry of TheUnconvensionalFarmer.com and I intend to try it out one day.
Steps to Follow
1. Make a Carbohydrate
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The amount of water in the litter is its moisture content. Dry matter content is the percent weight of the litter when all water has been driven off. There is no meter for measuring litter moisture. The ones used for forage, soil or wood will not work reliably with litter. Moisture and dry matter content of poultry litter can be determined through litter moisture analysis. Once you find one, the other will be easy to calculate. The analysis can be done as follows:
1. Collect Litter Sample: The objective of litter sampling is to obtain a small sample of litter that represents the whole litter in the house. You’ll have to collect a huge sample of litter from different locations in the poultry house, mix them thoroughly and then take a small sample from the huge sample for test. The 2 methods that can be used in litter sampling are
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Egg sizes can be generally classified into small, medium, large and extra-large. Among these, the ones we desire are medium and large egg sizes. Extra-large eggs are bad for the birds and we don’t want small eggs.
Commercial hybrid layers can lay 250-310 eggs in one year, but if you’re not careful, most of these eggs will be of small sizes. This is not only a problem when you sell your eggs, it is also a problem when they’re meant for family consumption. Who want to be getting only small eggs?
Discover how to prevent your birds from laying lots of small eggs Discover how to increase egg production by 20-30%. Are your birds laying small eggs and you want the size increased? Do large eggs fetch more money in your area?
To discover these, download and read this ebook.
Or
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Do you know that herbs have the capability to replace antibiotics? This will be possible if our scientists step up their research on herbs. Right now, there are lots of proven and promising researches that show that herbs and plant extracts can be used to prevent and treat diseases in farm animals. They can also be used to promote growth and lower mortality.
The good thing about herbs is that they can be used without the risk of creating the dreadful antibiotic resistance in man and farm animals.
The ebook you’re about to download contains a lot of herbal and plant extracts for chickens. You can make them in your home and benefit from the health-giving and growth-promoting power of herbs. The ebook contains:
Various herbs and plant extracts that have been used to prevent diseases Herbs and plant extracts that can be used to promote growth in broilers Herbs
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Feed consumption plan can help you estimate how much feed your birds will need at each stage (Chick, grower and laying). This will help you estimate feed cost before beforehand. The feed plan below is base on commercial brown egg layers that are reared intensively (i.e. they’re reared in an enclosed building and provided with feed and water daily. They’re not allowed to free-range). Obviously, you mustn’t follow this plan exactly as it is, you can make adjustments according to your own unique conditions.
Chick Starter: This is usually fed for the first 8-9 weeks. Switch to grower only when the body weight target have been achieved (i.e. about 720g from the chart below).
Grower Diet: This is usually fed from 8-9 weeks until 5% of the birds start laying. This can be at 20 weeks (more or less).
Layers Diet: A switch is made from grower to layers diet
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Broilers were selected to grow fast. Before you can tap into their full potential, it is very important that you keep their environment clean. One major way to achieve this is by keeping the litter in good condition.
Litter consists of droppings and bedding materials. You should ensure that the litter is always in a dry and loose form (25-35% moisture content). Wet litter occurs when the moisture content in the litter is high. This can cause the litter to cake up and trap water in it. Wet litter is common around drinkers and under leaky roofs. Below are few consequences of wet litter.
To assess the moisture level in the litter, squeeze a handful. If it forms a cake, the moisture level is too high. If it crumbles into fine dust, the moisture level is too low and the litter will be dusty. When the moisture level is optimum,
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If you buy egg layers as day old chicks, it will take about 4-5 months before they start laying eggs. During this period when they are unproductive, they’ll just be consuming feed without putting some money in your pocket or eggs on your table. The only gain you might get is from the sales of feed bags or manure. From day old to 5 months time, one layer can consume about 9.3kg of feed. So you can estimate feed cost from that. There are other costs such as vaccination, transportation, electricity, drugs etc. The fact is that you’ll be spending money.
Now what if after you’ve spent so much money and those young birds finally start laying eggs and they suddenly start getting sick? You may have some pullets (young egg layers) that are doing great, but once they start laying you notice that diseases started coming up and mortality
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