Welcome to bestars poultry farm. My kids would always sing 'from Monday to Friday we go to school while on Saturdays we rest a bit' . So, this weenkend, i would like us to shake off stress by touring you round my poultry farm. Pls come with me.
This is the pen house. We are still practicing dip- liter system , as a result our laying bird are on the floor of the pen house though we hope to switch to battery cage system in the future and strive to improve so many things here. The advantage of using battery cage is there no contact between the birds and their waste. It prevents them from fighting and wounding each other. Battery cage also helps in producing big egg size because all energy is geared towards producing egg, no space for walking about, flying around and fighting. So the birds was about 2200 poulets when we booked them, but during the course of brooding and rearing, we incured some casualties which reduced their number to about 2000 or thereabout. Their beak were cut short at 7/8 weeks with a debeaking machine to prevent cannibalism and breaking eggs when they will be due for laying. They were also fed for a period of 16 weeks before they start laying and can lay for 2 months before attaining to a peak production and bring profit back home. With proper management, they can lay for 2 years in dip liter system and more in battery cage system. As we speak, they are getting to 2years old. The more they age, the more their egg production reduces. They produce about 40-45 creates of egg on daily basis during their peak years but now they produce 35-37 creates. And as time goes on, they will continue to age and could not perform better until we sell them off as old layers or spent birds and stock another ones but before selling them, we are planning to place order for day olds and rear them to point of lay so that we would not fall off business-wise and loose our customers when we sell the old ones.
Dip-liter system poses a lot of stress on layers because they are in close contact with their waste or excrement. Whenever there is out break of disease , it spreads like wild fire, hence, we clean the pen house 2-3 times per week. They also fight a lot. One may want to ask how we maintain them or keep them from incurring diseases constantly.
One of the ways we do this is by maintaining a proper hygiene. First, the drinkers are washed after each water serving about 3-4 times a day . You can see my worker doing that part. (sorry for the sore sight) thats the effect of dip liter system of poultry. In One of the seminars we poultry farmers attended , we were taught that their drinkers should be as neat as my drinking cup and their drinking water should be as clean as my own drinking water if not, we will continue to spend so much money on drugs as there would be recurrent infections due to poor hygiene.
Let's visit few facilities here. First is the manure store. We scrape and pack the manure in bags and store them for sale. Since our poultry is located in a farming community, local farmers visit us here to buy the manure for their crops. They like it because of its effectiveness on crops. It contains no mixture of saw dust. It is 100% organic waste.
Let's move to the quarantine or the isolation room. We separate and keep and treat infectious birds here, while we administer drugs on the rest for prevention. We also keep wounded birds here but most times we leave the wounded ones on free range if they are healthy. There are some drugs we administer regularly to ensure efficiency. We deworm the birds every 10days and administer some antibiotics since they would pick from the floor that contains their waste. We also give vaccines to prevent outbreak of certain infections. We also give calcium supplements to boost egg size and egg mass. Also since it is a laying bird, we also administer multivitamins to replenish nutrients lost in producing eggs. Thanks for joining me. Next time i will provide snacks for refreshment. Goodbye.Photo credit: all pictures are mine.
