How to safely avoid heat stress casualties to layers in Summer
September 21, 2024
As a chicken farmer, what is your most fear in summer, it must be a power off. Every summer there will always be a large number of casualties of chicken flocks due to power outages.
In the daytime, chicken farms are inseparable from people. Because chickens have no sweat glands and poor heat dissipation capacity, laying hens are prone to heat stress in the hot summer. Heat stress is the non-specific response to overheating of the environment.
Laying hens will suffer from heat stress when thetemperature exceeds 28°C. The chickens will be irritable and restless at first, then they will suffer from mental retardation, muscle cramps, increased water consumption, stretch their necks and open their mouths.
When the temperature is highest at noon, the chickens are reluctant to move around.
Conjunctiva and conjunctiva will turn purple, and there will be concentrated deaths in the afternoon. Chickens have obvious neurological symptoms. The mortality rate can reach 100% in a short period of time in a high temperature and high humidity environment, which we have to do more preventions.
Heat stress can cause lower feed intake, endocrine disorders, lower egg production rate, lower egg shell quality, reduced egg weight, and dead scouring of laying hens. However, we can alleviate or avoid heat stress through nutritional regulation and feeding management . Feeding management
1. Adjust the feeding time in summer to increase feed intake in the morning and evening when the temperature is low. Ensure that drinking water is adequate and clean. Unsanitary water can easily cause enteritis.
2. Reduce the stocking density, eliminate the sick and weak chickens, and give the chickens a suitable living space.
3. Remove feces and debris in time, prevent feces from fermenting and heating up, strengthen ventilation and heat dissipation, and reduce the temperature in the house.
4. Spray disinfection with chickens can not only kill pathogens, but also lower the temperature (increase ventilation when spraying, otherwise the mortality rate of high-temperature and high-humidity chickens will be higher).
Nutrition regulation
layer will reduce the feed intake under heat stress, increase the nutrient concentration of the compound feed, and ensure the nutrient intake level of the layer.
1. In summer, the feed protein level of laying hens is very low. In order not to affect the egg weight and egg production rate, it is necessary to increase the protein utilization rate. Adding the corresponding amino acids can increase the body's absorption efficiency, thereby increasing the chicken's absorption and utilization of protein.
2. Carbohydrates produce more heat, but fats produce less heat, so part of fat can be used instead of carbohydrates to extend the digestion time of feed. The amount of fat added is generally 2%-3%. At this time, adding bile acid can be increased by bile acid.
The digestion, absorption and utilization of oil can save half of the amount of oil added (for example, adding 20 kg of oil to 10 kg per ton), and does not affect egg production performance, and can also reduce the burden of fat addition on the liver.
You must be curious on how bile acid work on anti-heat stress: under high temperature and heat stress, the demand for bile acid in the intestine is increased, and heat stress affects the synthesis and transport of bile acid in the liver, resulting in insufficient bile acid secretion.
Exogenous addition of bile acids can relieve heat stress, stimulate the liver to synthesize more bile acids, improve protein and fat metabolism, maintain the balance of intestinal flora, and promote the absorption of feed nutrients.