Chicken Lodge

Our hearts goes out to livestock farmers in Nigeria, especially poultry farmers in this hot weather. How are you all holding up?

There are lots of birds losses making rounds already. We've once lost huge numbers of chickens to the weather in our Lagos poultry some years back, so we know how heartwrenching such loss can be and definitely do not want you going through same stress.

So we decided to put these tips out here so people who own backyard poultries and do not enjoy the services of professionals can try them to avoid loosing their birds to hot weather.

✓ Use cages that enhances cross ventilation

✓ Let your poultry location be in a well ventilated area away from places prone to prolonged sun rays.

✓ Alter access to your birds feeds when the Sun peaks. (Here in Ibadan, Sun becomes very hot from 12pm most times, till 4:30 pm. We remove the feeders in our chicken cages so they can depend on only water. This helps them take more water and stay hydrated)

✓ Make sure their source of water is not placed directly in the sun to avoid hotness. If the tank you get water from gets hot when the Sun is out, fetch water into containers and keep away from sun before the tank water gets hot)

✓ Check their waters at intervals to make sure it hasn't changed temperature. (When water gets warm or hot, the chickens avoid it and this usually leads to dehydration, unconsciousness and then death)

✓ Add ice or serve them chilled water (In places where the weather is extremely hot like in the North, ice can be added to the chickens water to keep the temperature normal)

✓ If you can, use fan or even AC In your poultry (Large scale or medium scale poultry farmers can use AC or fans in places where the weather is hot and ventilation is poor)

These were curated from personal experiences and I think would work for other livestock farmers.

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Chicken Lodge

Few days ago, I watched the news about how livestock farmers (especially poultry farmers) in Ibadan came out in numbers to protest against the high price of chicken feeds.

I discussed it with someone a day later pointing out the situation would likely cause more increase in the prices of eggs. She said naively "they should just stop giving them plenty food , they are grown afterall".

Apparently, a lot of people do not understand the importance of routine feeding to chickens bred for commercial purposes.

Chickens are quite more complicated than we know and a lot of factors goes into the quality and quantity of feeds they consume.

Chickens raised for eggs (layers) for example would lay quality and good sizes of eggs when properly cared for.

Chickens do not lay eggs only when they mate with cocks(male hens). They lay eggs as a routine ovulation procedure but only lay fertile eggs when they mate.

The quality of a layers feed and general care would determine the kind of eggs they lay.

And chickens are so complicated that the slightest changes in the routine way of caring for them signals a kind of hormonal changes which could take time and extra expenses to keep them back in track.

In the case of feeds getting super expensive. The disadvantages to farmers is that they would be forced to change routine which would affect both the size , meat and egg quality of the chicken and make them run into losses; since chicken and eggs are usually priced based on their sizes.

So when you pay for an egg, you're not just paying for the egg.

You're paying for the fee, care and the people it takes to manage the chickens.

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