Thread by @tonyOWEI

ONLINE POULTRY CLASS

LESSON FOR WEEK SIX
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A warm welcome to everyone who tunes weekly to this channel for your favourite online class – the online poultry class. Welcome to the sixth series.

Thank you for the feedback from all over Nigeria including from Ghana and the UK. It has been humbling.

Many more good things are in the works just for you. Stay locked here.

Now for this week...

To my Nigerian audience, we had hoped we would have a President-elect by now if not for the postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly elections by our electoral body – INEC. Kindly keep the peace and go out massively to vote come February 23, 2019. Your vote counts!

Now back to the matter. Last week, we talked about security measures you need to put in place to secure your poultry investment. If you missed the class, you can view it here:

https://twitter.com/tonyOWEI/status/1095764925115289601?s=19

Today, we are dealing with another fundamental issue in poultry business – design of your poultry housing and how to maintain your poultry equipment. Please take all these foundational tools seriously as it would help as when you start raising your poultry birds.

There are basics to look out for as discussed in previous lessons. The land must be well selected.

The location, access road (You will need to move materials to site for construction, move in your inputs or move out outputs/products and customers must also be able to access your location), soil texture, accessibility to water, among others must be put into consideration.

THE FARM DESIGN

You have to have a goal or capacity in mind based on the land available. This is important in order to get the right design and plan subsequent expansions. Roads and entrances should be clearly outlined and planned for.

Other tips in designing your poultry houses and farms include the following:
- Recommended distance should be the width of each house on the farm
- Brooder and Grower houses should be away from frequent activity areas and usually an extreme location away from other facilities.

- Ensure frequent activity areas are far from poultry pen houses

- Your farm design should not allow visitors, office staff and outside vehicles come in contact with your birds. 

- Younger birds should be kept at less frequented and calm area(s).

- Entrance to pen houses should have bio-security points such as foot baths/deep for personnel and visitors and hand-wash basins for personnel and visitors.

- Young bird houses should be located on the upwind flow side to avoid cross-infection from adults to young birds through air, usually in the east in the case of Nigeria.

THE POULTRY PEN

In week one, we defined what poultry farming is to be the process of raising domesticated birds such as chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese for the purpose of farming meat or eggs for food. The house in which you raise them are called pens.

There are two major poultry farming systems being practiced. They are the deep litter system and the cage system. The deep litter system is basically raising your birds on the floor with bedding materials like wood shavings (not sawdust).

The cage system is housing your birds in cages without having direct contacts with their droppings. The cage system is far more efficient and good for the health of the birds.

For both of the systems, there are two possible types of houses – the open houses and closed or environmental controlled houses.

The type and size of your pen largely depends on your own plan based on your resources, the location and land characteristics as well as the space available to work with. ECHs are more expensive and sophisticated.

For the pen houses, you could adopt a flushing/scrapper system which is cheaper and faster to build, requires excess water in flushing, and with other attendant cost and labour implications.

On the other hand is the high-rise pen which cost more and requires a longer time to build, manure/chicken droppings management is easier and it gives your poultry birds good ventilation.

FOR POULTRY CAGE AND EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE

This means you have to keep your pen and equipment in good working condition at all times – physical fittings, wire nets, floors, foot dip, among others.

POULTRY CAGES

Poultry cages forms a huge financial cost in the poultry business. You need to maintain them properly so as to reduce to overall cost and not affect your profitability due to frequent replacement or repairs.

Few tips include ensuring your attendance do not stand on them and serving materials should not be used wrongly. When cleaning water pipes, check for leakages and fix them, and use appropriate cleaning materials.

Flush your nipples/pipes regularly to avoid blockade & a buildup of diseases that could affect your birds' health/productivity. Feeders should be free from water leakages & damaged ones should be repaired/replaced. Ensures your birds have unhindered access to good feed always.

Regularly weed your pen environment and clean the drainage systems. Same way you lead a healthy life by ensuring your surroundings and what you take in are clean, this applies to your poultry birds.

The rule is simple, whatever you expose them to brings a corresponding result. Input ultimately determines output.

In the end, maintenance is an ongoing lifestyle that must be imbibed. It takes discipline and commitment to succeed at it. If you don’t take your poultry business seriously, your poultry business will not take care of you too.

NEXT WEEK – AN ENGAGEMENT WEEK

It will will be a Q and A session where you have the chance to ask questions so far from the first 6 lessons on poultry farming and business within 8 and 9pm. I will put up a post by 8pm and respond to questions under the thread.

By week 8, we will learn how to source and brood your birds and share tips on how to raise them with special focus on layers and broilers. 

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