28/02/2024
When you enter the house, there's a lot of things to actually check and assess. At first, we will feel the climate and see if the temperature feels comfortable, not only by looking at the birds, but also checking at bird's height, if there's a comfortable temperature, and also how is the air quality. Do we feel there's a lot of ammonia in the air? Do we feel there's a very humid climate? There are things that sometimes the computer will not tell you, but that the birds and your own impressions in the house will better tell you. Then also we will check the feed hopper. In the feed hopper, we can have an assessment of the feed quality, how does it smell, what is the structure of the feed. Thereafter, we will go and walk through the whole house, see if the birds are active when moving around. All of the birds should be just up and running away from you. Also, we will check if the homogeneity is a very important parameter to assess. We will check each time flocks of five to ten birds, and check if the size of the birds is very similar or not. Then we also check the litter quality. Litter quality we can easily assess by sliding our feed and checking if the litter is loose or more caked. Water and feed are very important ingredients to assess. We need both excellent feed quality and excellent water quality, and also we want the birds to easily access that feed and water. For the feed, we will check feed pens, where again the consistency of the feed is very important. You can have pellets that have too much fines, that have too much damage from the transport, and give a lot of fines in the pens. This could cause some birds to have too much pellets eaten, other ones will prefer the fines and will eat too much fines. So that can be a reason of bad homogeneity or bad growth of the birds. On one side. On the other side, we also have to check that the feed access is easy for the birds. The feed access should be easy by checking the height of the feed pens, and the height of the feed pans should be at the height of the back of the birds. This will allow the birds to have a good access to the feed. For the drinking water, what is very important in ni**le systems, is to check that the water pressure is not too high, and the water pressure is not too low. If the water pressure is too high, when the birds try to drink from the ni**le, the pressure will cause too much water to flow, and too much water will be lost in the ni**le. That can give, of course, later on little quality problems and too high water consumption in the house. That is, of course, not good. On the other hand, when the water pressure is too low, the birds have to make too much effort to drink enough water, so they will be hampered in their water intake. Water intake that is decreased can also cause lower feed intake, and cause, of course, lower growth. The water lines also should have a height which is correct, and the correct height is defined by the need for the bird to stretch their necks in order to have a comfortable drinking. If you have to bend it down too much, they will be not easily drinking the water, and that can also have an impact on the water intake. When you are to assess water and feed lines, remember to check the water and feed lines not only at one particular spot in the house, but check it at the front, the middle, and at the end of the house, because the quality of the feed and water can differ a lot between the different zones in the poultry house. When we want to assess feed consistency, we have to remember that digestion is the primary economic factor in bird production, so we need really good feed consistency in order to have a very good economic and healthy growth. When we look at the feed consistency, there's a lot of things that can be abnormal, such as orange greenness, or very slimy, or very watery. In other words, the climate, you don't only look at the machine, you don't only use your own senses to assess the climatic quality, you also look at the first signs of respiratory issues. First signs of respiratory issues can be covered by checking the nose of the birds, and when you see dirty nose, it means that we are completely deprived from the nose where dust will be trapped into, and that will give the dirty nose. When you see this, this is the first sign of potential respiratory issues. Another sign of potential bad climate or respiratory diseases coming up can be coniunctivitis. Coniunctivitis can be seen by eyes that are red, and a little bit of discharge that is coming from the eyes.
Source: Poultry World
