How To Minimize Poultry Feed Wastage
About 75% of the capital spent on poultry business is for feeding. Hence, one has to be highly careful in preventing birds from wasting the feed. There are several ways of avoiding feed wastage of which the major and most common ways are discussed below.
1. Using The Right Feeders
The two types of feeders are Straight feeder and Round feeder. In both types, feed wastage can be prevented by using the feeder with lip, ensuring the feeder not more than half or one-third filled, hanging the feeder at the level of the bird’s back and the feeder should be at least 7cm deep.
2. Get Rid Of Rats
A rat can eat about 12kg of feed and waste over 36kg of feed on yearly basis. Rats also promote spread of viral diseases through mouth contact with feed. Make sure the feed store is rat-proof, you can even use trap to catch those that have gained entrance to the feed store.
Learn More3. Debeaking
Debeaking or Beak trimming is the cutting of the sharp points of the lower and upper beak. This should be done by an experienced person to avoid mouth pain to the birds. Beak trimming helps to prevent cannibalism, feed wastage and feather pulling. Beaked birds can waste feed about 5 times than the debeaked ones.
4. Overfeeding
Overfeeding is not good as it can make the birds excessively fat and unhealthy, especially the laying birds, a fat hen is a poor layer. Overfeeding can be prevented by using the standard feeding chart as a guide. The chart shows how much feed required with respect to the bird’s type and age. It may not be followed strictly as it is just a guide. Read more on Poultry Feed.
Enough feeders must be provided to prevent difference in growth rate and body weight. The number of required feeders is a function of the type of feeder used and birds stocked. For straight feeder, a broiler needs 5cm, a growing layer needs 9cm and 12cm in laying birds. In round feeder, it is 2cm, 4cm and 5cm for a broiler, growing layer and layer respectively.
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