Category Archives: livestock

Eggs – Eggs – Eggs Galore

by

Yay!!! On May 25, the first egg was laid. It was a day of celebration and joy since our efforts were finally bearing fruit. The sad thing is that during the next 3 weeks we lost 5 birds, which were trampled to death as they struggled to find a corner to lay. 

We have now fixed the issue and the birds are getting used to the hatchery boxes “bibikiro” in the local language, and as of June 4 (USA Independence day) we are achieving 90% productivity. 

Dietwise even if the birds are laying they are still on growers mash till end of July, 2 months of productivity, to ensure they grow and develop producing for much longer. 

For now we are ramping up advertisement and growing the market for the eggs 

New Drinking Containers

by

Well this is somewhat overdue, but we have finally made the shift from the white drinking containers (which had to be cleaned and refilled every 2 hours) to locally made ones from jerrrycans which take about 10 liters each and can last for most of the day with a coupla refills. 

The old containers used to take about 120liters of water per refill for all of them with the largest taking 10l and the others about 4liters, however the more commonly used ones used to dry up within an hour or so. With all the chickens consuming about 180liters of water a day this made for quite a bit of tiresome manual labor …

Also interesting is that the chickens took to the new containers instantly which was also a good thing…

As always photos below 

Before

After 

De-beaking Completed

by

Finally we came to that time 12 weeks, when we have to debeak the birds. It was a tough process requiring careful cutting of the top beak (easy) followed by the lower one (can be slightly longer) which is more complicated because the tongue tends to get in the way. Cutting the tongue is fatal to the bird. 

2 days before the de-beaking, we de-wormed the birds to ensure that the antibiotics would be fully absorbed and it would be the last chance to do so before eggs were laid. 

The first two days after de-beaking were the toughest as it was evident that the process was very traumatic to the birds, as they are quiet (probably in pain) and docile (wonder whether its the medication) … They are slowly recovering and getting back into shape. 

The water consumption which had dropped to 60 litres for 900 birds, is now steadily climbing back to pre-debeaking levels of 120litres per day.

As always a few photos: 

Extension Completed – Chickens Moved

by

Finally after a long struggle we have been able to complete the extension to move the chickens from the brooder to their final house. One major constraint we faced was with the cost of materials so we used alternatives, polyethene roofing instead of iron sheets and a mixture of burnt bricks/cement/sand as the flooring material instead of rock (to ensure the chickens do not scratch). 

On the first night however, due to transition stress and new environment, one of the chickens was crushed to death in a corner so we have to place bricks and plastic materials to change the corners to curves to prevent this happening again.

Photos of the migration below:

8 weeks – Still Growing Strong

by

The chickens are now at 8 weeks, we had Fowl pox vaccination last Saturday and will be doing Fowl typhoid (injection into breast) this weekend as we draw closer to debeaking at 12 weeks. 

The house extension is almost completed so they will be moving to a breezier environment in the next 10 days depending on the weather conditions if it dries