5 Ways To Increase Your Profit Margin, And To Ensure your Broilers Utilizes The Feed They Are Given On the Farm.
It is a known fact that poultry feeds account for more than 60% of the total cost of raising broilers at a given time.
Making these feeds available to your broiler birds alone does not guarantee complete success. There are other factors if left unchecked will greatly impact the profitability of the entire venture.
This article will highlight some of these important factors:
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To Ensure your Broilers Utilizes The Feed, Good Storage And Safety Of The Feeds is Important
Remember just like humans poultry birds love their feed to be presented fresh, palatable, and rich in nutrients, minerals, and vitamins, it should also smell good.
Feeds that are stored poorly especially in humid and warm climates (wet season), with high moisture content in the atmosphere, encourage mold growth.
Molds consume valuable nutrients and produce mycotoxins. Moldy feed is not only unpalatable but also toxic as well.
Molds due to poor storage could render your huge investment in poultry feeds almost useless if not taken seriously. These will impact the health of your birds and the effective utilization of feeds.
Feeds stored in plastic containers, drums and silos must be periodically inspected and cleaned thoroughly.
Your feeds should be stored in a well-ventilated, dry environment to ensure that moisture in any form does not reach your stored poultry feed. The roof of your store should be intact, not leaking.
If you want your broilers utilizes the feed properly, avoid mixing feeds that will last longer than 90 days. Depending on the size of your farm ideally, weekly production of feeds on the farm is preferable.
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Use Appropriate Feeders That Don’t Waste Feed
Nothing gives a poultry farmer headache than seeing his hard-earned money being wasted by his own birds.
One of the ways you can curb this menace is by using the appropriate feeder for the right age of the bird i.e discontinue the use of feed trays after 2 weeks of each.
For your broilers utilizes the feed effectively provide enough feeders for a particular number of birds, changing broken or damaged feeders immediately. Correctly placed drinkers close to the feeders, but not as close as to cause feed spoilage.
Provide enough resting places (patches in the poultry house) to avoid birds climbing on feeders i.e birds reared on a deep litter system.
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Feeding Your Birds Appropriately, Will Guaranty That your Broilers Utilizes The Feed properly
Feeding your birds continuously without a resting period is not always a good idea. This does not afford the birds the time to properly digest food.
Feeding your birds continuously presents an even more serious challenge, especially for birds reared in hot humid climates. Heat stroke is a leading course of death in broiler chickens during hot weather. Regulating their feed during the hot afternoons will help reduce the impact of the heat on your birds by reducing the amount of energy generated.
Ideally, birds should be fed well in the early hours of the day, then sparingly during the hot afternoon. In the late afternoons from 4:00 p.m, the quantity and volume of feed should be increased.
Water and electrolyte should be made available to them, especially on hot afternoons.
A slight space in between feeding improves birds’ apatite and allows birds to fully digest their feed while resting which also improves feed efficiency as birds do not walk aimlessly all-day
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Always Know Your Customer’s Target Weight
Most of the frustration expressed by smallholder broiler farmers is centered on their inability to sell their broiler birds at the appropriate time and to the right people.
Before you stock your broiler birds who are your target customers, where do you intend to sell your products? Are you considering involving the middlemen, eateries, or restaurants or you are targeting festive and religious ceremonies?
All of this segment of buyers have their preferences and specification in terms of the size and body weight of birds.
Having a contractual agreement before you stock your birds will go a long way in saving you from a lot of headaches and disappointment.
Defining your targeted weight for your broilers from the onset will help you make projections on how to provide good feed to your birds, at the same time help them efficiently utilize the feed for maximum profit.
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Keeping Your Birds Healthy
Feeding a sick bird with the most quality feed on earth is like pouring water into the basket. It’s absolutely a waste of time and resources.
The simple fact is sick birds do not grow, and if they do not grow, it means no weight gain. One of the greatest tasks for any broiler farmer is keeping his birds healthy throughout the rearing period, for proper feed utilization and feed efficiency.
In contrast, healthy birds, with a very healthy digestive system, will in turn properly utilize the nutrients in their feed at maximal efficiency for rapid growth and weight gain.
Only healthy and attractive birds will attract good buyers.
In Conclusion
Helping your poultry birds to properly utilize the feed given to them should be a deliberate decision by the poultry farmer from the onset, and to assist the birds achieved feed efficiency. Because the entire poultry business has to do with the principle of input and output, the effort you put in is what you will expect.
