Chronicle EditorTHE beauty of farming is that it is a practical subject which provides you with interesting lessons when you do the activities practically as opposed to reading about the concepts in literature.
A colleague of mine calls it the difference between the theory of agriculture and the agricultural practice. Now that, I have a small but growing concern of egg production, I find myself persuaded to research and share on a few lived experiences of layer production.
This week we want to look at the negative effects of overfeeding your layers. Those involved in layer production will agree with me that it is very easy to find yourself giving your layers more than they should have.
This usually happens when your numbers are still small in terms of birds that you are keeping and as such the cost of feed is still very manageable from your pocket. It will also happen because you do not have measuring instruments to be able to measure the appropriate quantities you should give per bird.
Again, it will happen because of sheer passion and the desire to see your birds happy and not quacking in demand for feed, even if you have just fed them.
Ordinarily, each laying pullet will need about 120g of feed per day. Over feeding your layers therefore means you are giving them more than they need for production.
This has negative effects on your production and the first sign that you could be overfeeding your layers, is when you see them producing excessively big eggs. This is very tempting because the bigger the eggs, the easier they are to sell but if this goes on unchecked it can cause complications to your birds.
In milder cases, your eggs will come out blood stained and in extreme cases, it can result in a phenomenon called egg binding.
This is when a bird fails to expel the egg from the oviduct, it has failed to lay the egg because the egg is stuck inside the bird. If this persists it can be fatal to the bird.
There are several causes of egg binding hence it is not always due to overfeeding. It can be caused by calcium and other nutrient deficiency, oviduct infection, excessively large or deformed egg, egg retention due to insufficient nesting areas and it can also be due to birds going into laying prematurely.
However, it is important to note that the major cause of egg binding is obesity in your birds which is directly linked to over feeding.
Another sign that you could be overfeeding your birds, is when they become less mobile especially in open deep litter systems.
Birds are normally full of energy and move around in search for insects and all, therefore when you see your birds showing less desire to move and preferring to just stay in one place, it could be a sign of obesity.
Negative effects of overfeeding are, however, easy to correct as all you need is to adjust your feeding quantities downwards.
You may also need to exercise your birds especially if you are using a enclosed system like the battery cage system. You will need to open and let them forage out in the open, allowing them to move around and get to exercise.
This may be difficult if you have no space and you have relatively large numbers to handle. Another important lesson I have picked from my small layer production enterprise is that you need to be observant and be quick to notice any behavioural change from your birds as this will be indicative of something happening either to individual birds or the entire flock.
The other time I noticed that my birds were becoming choosy and only picking grains from the feed and leaving out the more powdery component.
I then observed the guy responsible for feeding and noticed that he was actually providing more than he should and the birds were literally spoiled for choice!
They were overfed and hence thought, why not pick the meat and leave the soup! When I corrected the ration, they began to eat everything again.
Uyabonga umntaka MaKhumalo.
Mhlupheki Dube is a livestock specialist and farmer. He writes in his own capacity. Feed back [email protected], cell 0772851275
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