Formulating Your Own Chicken Feed: 3 Ways to Go About It

By FarmersJoint in Poultry

Feed cost constitutes over 70% of the total cost of broiler and egg production. So you can gain more profit by minimizing feed cost without jeopardizing feed quality. One way to go about this is by producing your own feed. You can do this in 3 ways depending on your expertise, time and availability of equipment. The 3 ways are discussed below:

1. Toll Milling: Here, the farmer pays a commercial feed miller to mill the feed for him. The miller will grind the feed ingredients and mix them using their feed formula or the one you provided. The feed ingredients can either be purchased from the miller or provided by you.

Advantages: You don’t need to own very cost feed milling equipment like grinder, mixer, generator etc. You have some control on the cost and quality of feed ingredients. So if you can get these ingredients at
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Tags: , , , , , , | Category: Poultry | 5 comments

Chicken Health: Avoiding Antibiotic Abuse through Laboratory Tests

By FarmersJoint in Poultry

Antibiotics are drugs used to treat diseases caused by bacteria and other micro-organisms, but they’re not effective against viruses. Antibiotic abuse occurs when antibiotic is given to healthy animals in low doses, or when the wrong antibiotic is used in treating disease. There are more than one antibiotic that can kill a particular bacteria, but not all are equally effective. Some antibiotics might be ineffective because the bacteria have developed resistance to them. This is known as antibiotic resistance. When antibiotic-resistant bacteria make your birds sick, treating them with that antibiotic will give no result. You may end up spending a lot of money on drugs and yet the birds won’t respond to treatment.

To avoid spending money unnecessarily while treating sick birds, it is important that you conduct a laboratory test that will help identify the sickness, after which an antibiotic sensitivity test is carried out
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Common Questions about Abnormal Eggs and Egg Layers

By FarmersJoint in Poultry

We’re used to normal eggs but when we encounter some abnormal ones, we may start wondering how safe they are for consumption, or we may wonder how and why it really happened. Below are answers to some common questions about egg layers and abnormal eggs.

#1. Egg Shells with Rough Patches and/or Little Hard Pimples

The rough patches or hard pimples you see are due to deposition of excess calcium on the shell. It can happen due to the following reasons.

Young hens laying for the first time may produce such eggs but after a while it cease. It can also occur in older birds when they are getting excess calcium. For example, during the winter when egg production slows down, some eggs might get more calcium deposited on them. You can counter this by stimulating egg production with light and by feeding balanced feed or high-protein treats if
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Raising Chickens: How to Stop Egg Eaters

By FarmersJoint in Poultry

It can start as a mistake – a bird step on an egg with weak shell and it break, or two birds are fighting in the nest box and an egg got broken. Whichever way, once an egg break and a hen taste the yummy content, that hen will embark on a mission of egg eating and others will watch and learn from her. Egg eating can cost you a lot if it goes uncheck and the funny part is that they can eat the whole egg – both the yummy content and shell! Sometimes you might not see evidence of the crime if you don’t pay attention to details.

Signs of Egg Eating

If you notice egg shells (even tiny ones) and wet spots in the nesting box, suspect egg eating. The culprit might have yolk on their beak, feathers and face, so look closely. During peak laying times,
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Feeding Poultry Litter to Ruminants (goats, sheep and cows)

By FarmersJoint in Livestock Farming

Manure in Chicken Feed Sacks

Poultry litter is a mixture of poultry manure, spilled feed, feathers, and bedding materials (such as wood shavings, sawdust, peanut hulls, shredded sugar cane, straw etc). Some will be shocked to discover that poultry litter can be fed to ruminants like cows, goats and sheep. Some will wonder how beneficial it is and its health implication to both ruminants and man. In a short while, we’ll be considering all these.

Why Would Some People Feed Poultry Manure to their Animals?

I’ll be writing about 3 reasons why farmers feed poultry litter to their animals.

1. Disposing Poultry Litter is a Big Challenge: Disposing of poultry litter can lead to environmental pollution. If you are a backyard poultry farmer, you may not understand what I mean. Chickens can generate tons and tons of manure over a period of time. A single layer hen weighing
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Tags: , , , , | Category: Livestock Farming, Ruminant | 4 comments
 
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