By FarmersJoint in Livestock Farming 
If you are not careful, you will loose many newborn piglets before they are separated from their mother at 4 to 6 weeks of age. The guide below will help prevent or minimize pre-weaning death.
Piglets soundly asleep
During Birth: Baby pigs can be born dead. This may be due to diseases or lack of oxygen when the birth period is long. Long birth period can be caused by large number of piglets or high birth weight. Large number of piglets can also increase the number of piglets born weak. These weak piglets may then be more likely to starve, become crushed by their mother, or diseased.
If you want to reduce pre weaning mortality, you have to observe them as often as possible. Look out for the weak ones and help them to drink their mother’s milk.
Thermal Stress: Unlike many other animals, baby pigs don’t possess mechanisms
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By FarmersJoint in Livestock Farming 
Vaccines help to prevent or minimize the impact of viral diseases. They are important because viral diseases cannot be treated with drugs. They can only be prevented with vaccines. If a poultry farmer is not careful to follow certain rules, the vaccine he administer will fail to protect his birds from viral diseases. And when this happens, many farmers end up blaming the vaccine manufacturers.
Vaccines can be given to birds through drinking water, by injection, eye drop, spray etc. The most common route for broiler is via drinking water and wing web puncture (for fowlpox vaccine). For egg layers it is via drinking water, wing web puncture (for fowlpox vaccine) and injections. You can get sample vaccination/medication plans for layers and broiler below:
Vaccination/Medication Plan for Layers Vaccination/Medication Plan for Broilers
Below are rules that will help you prevent vaccine failure:
1. Vaccinate healthy birds
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By FarmersJoint in Livestock Farming 
Below is broiler medication and vaccination chart you can follow. Vaccinating your birds against viral diseases is very important because viral diseases are incurable. Vaccination will help to prevent or reduce the severity of viral diseases.
Medication on the other hand, is used to treat or prevent diseases caused by bacteria, fungi or protozoa. But if you follow good biosecurity measures, you can reduce the amount of medication you give.
Here goes the chart:
Day 1: Marek vaccine: This is usually given to the chicks at the hatchery.
On getting to your brooding pen, give them multivitamins and minerals in water. Provide broiler starter feed in enough feeder such that all of them can feed at the same time without struggle.
Day 2-4: Multivitamins and antibiotics. Recommended antibiotics include …..
Day 5: Gumboro vaccine via drinking water.
Day 7: Lasota for Newcastle disease
Day 10-12: Anti-coccidiosis drugs and
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By FarmersJoint in Poultry 
Litter beetles are those dark beetles you find in poultry houses, most especially in deep litter houses. They normally hide under everything – drinkers, feeders, stones, laying boxes that are on the floor, along the walls etc. In my early days of raising chickens, I totally ignore these beetles because I thought they were harmless. But are they harmless? They are VERY harmful!
Litter beetles
Litter beetles eat chicken feed, their larvae bore into insulations, woods etc, they climb into poultry feathers and bite them, sometimes killing weakened chickens and worst of all, they can carry a lot of poultry diseases!
The scientific name for these little destroyers is Alphitobius diaperinus. Locally, they can also be called darkling beetles, lesser mealworm, black beetles etc. They cause more problems in houses where the litter is allowed to build up without any effective control program in place.
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By FarmersJoint in Livestock FarmingWhen it comes to ruminant farming, Nigeria still practice the archaic system of nomadic grazing and cut-and-carry system from bushes. In countries like Kenya, livestock farmers grow grass to feed their animals. Many Nigerians may find this laughable but it is far better than what we’re used to.
Growing your own grass means that you are sure that feed supply will be enough to meet your animals’ need. It is also hygienic. When I was young, we had some goats and I was the one that feed them. I normally went to bushes to cut grass. One thing that worried me so much is the eye-sores I normally encounter. I would always have to cope with the sight of human feces here and there. In fact, that was the main thing that discouraged me from goat farming.
Cattle grazing close to farmlands
Now that I have discovered
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By FarmersJoint in Livestock FarmingPay a visit to fresh fruit and vegetable markets and slaughter houses and you’ll see how much food get wasted daily. Unknown to many, these wastes can easily be converted to nutritious meal for pigs, poultry, goats, sheep, cows, rabbits, and fish by a process called lactic acid fermentation. All you need is a lactic acid bacteria, a source of fermentable carbohydrate and time. Don’t mind the complex names, you can easily get all of them.
Fruits, vegetables, fish and slaughter house wastes has very high water content and that makes them highly perishable. They can be treated in various ways but those ways can hardly compete with fermentation – they may be composted (time consuming), used in vermiculture (growing of earthworm) or biogas digesters (why use a valuable waste when you can use manure instead?) or fed directly to animals (they may contain pathogens and pesticides. There is
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By FarmersJoint in PoultryWhen you get your day old chicks, it is important to do what is called “day old chick screening”. Day old chick screening has a lot of benefits that can save you from disaster. It helps you to know the right time to vaccinate your birds and tells you the right antibiotics to use.
Although there are established vaccination plans that will work for most people in an area, DOC screening is still important because Hatcheries can make mistakes. Some vaccination plans may tell you to vaccinate for Newcastle disease on day 7. But because of hatchery mistake, the chicks may actually need the vaccine on day 5 to prevent disaster. DOC screening will help you discover this.
Due to the cost of this screening (N7000 as of 2015), it may not be favorable to those who has less than 500 or 1000 chicks as the case may
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By FarmersJoint in RuminantThe Tumbukiza method, which originate from Kenya, has been known to improve grass yield (by about 2x) and drought tolerance. The grass will grow longer into the dry season before the leaves start dying off. This means that feed will still be available during part of the dry season. But with irrigation, dry season will lose its significance.
Tumbukiza MethodCourtesy of FAO.org
There are 2 types of Tumbukiza method: The round pit type and the rectangular pit type.
Round Pit Type: Dig a pit 60cm in diameter and 60cm deep, leaving 60cm space between the pits.
Rectangular Pit Type: Dig a pit 60cm deep and 60-90cm wide. The length of the pit will depend on the available land, but it should be as long as possible. Leave 90cm space between pits. Rectangular pits that are long make more economical use of land and are easier to
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By FarmersJoint in Crop and PlantationInsecticides are used by crop farmers to control insect pests that attack crops. It is a well-known fact that world-wide, some insecticides are losing their effectiveness due to insecticide resistance – i.e. some insecticides no longer kill insects they’re meant to kill. US farmers lost 7% of their crops to pests in the 1940s. Over the 1980s and 1990s, the loss was 13% even though more pesticides (including insecticides) were being used. There are several factors that can cause this but we won’t be considering them here. Rather, we’ll learn how to control pests in such a way that prevents/minimizes insecticide resistance from occurring.
Why is Insecticide Resistance so Bad?
The word tuta absoluta will continue to strike terror into the hearts of tomato farmers. It is a moth – a flying insect that can cause 100% yield loss in tomato farms. Farmers tried to kill these little insects with
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By FarmersJoint in Livestock FarmingBiosecurity has to do with measures you take to prevent entry of pests and diseases into your farm. A lot of farmers ignore these measures – including me! But from my bad experiences in the past, I no longer take biosecurity for granted. Observing these measures will help minimize disease incidence in your farm. Teach your workers also (very important). Don’t have the mentality that animals are animals and so anything goes. Ignoring the following biosecurity measures can be catastrophic – even if you spend tons of antibiotics on them.
1. Ventilation: Lack of free air movement can cause ammonia gas from droppings to accumulate. It also lead to wet bedding and a host of other problems. All these will eventually lead to pest and disease infestation. So, locate your farm in a well-ventilated area. It should not be box-in by several tall buildings.
2. Closeness to Other Farms:
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