How to avoid egg production losses in your laying flocks

With proper management, care, and monitoring, well-trained staff can easily manage egg production losses to guarantee excellent egg production for your commercial layer business.

The main objective of any farmer is to continuously produce a steady supply of good-quality table eggs for the market.

This cannot happen without implementing a thoroughly laid-out management system, which starts with proper housing, nutrition, and disease prevention strategies.

Housing: The ideal poultry shed should provide the birds with a comfortable environment and protect them from the extreme weather conditions (rain, wind, sunshine, heat, and chills).

The unit should provide adequate space for the flock. The ideal stocking density for layers at the point of lay should be two square feet per bird (2 square ft/bird) in normal tropical weather conditions.

In the coastal regions with high ambient temperatures and high humidity, this can be increased to three square feet per bird.

It is good practice in our type of climate to build open-sided walls to allow natural ventilation and have an east-west orientation to minimise the amount of sunlight entering the house directly.

Besides housing, you must also provide sufficient, comfortable, and accessible nests for egg laying. If a proper housing environment is not met, flocks will not lay eggs to their maximum genetic potential.

Chick care and nutrition: Correct litter and temperature are vital to ensure the chicks are active and feeding in the first four weeks of life.

The house should be heated to 35C for the first week, and this temperature will be reduced by 2C weekly until week 4, when brooding is not needed.

Provide top-quality chick and duck mash for the first eight weeks and grower mash until you see the first eggs around weeks 16-18 of age.

Layer mashes will be introduced when the pullets are at their point of laying. Most farmers do not periodically weigh a sample of their birds to monitor weight gain.

Layer breeders advise that the best predictor of future laying performance is the pullet's body weight and body type at the point of lay.

A pullet flock entering egg production at the correct body weight (1.35-1.40kg) with uniformity higher than 90 per cent performs best during the production period. It is important to achieve 6-, 12-, 18-, 24-, and 30-week body weight targets to ensure optimum development of the bird's body.

Managing stressors: Heat stress can profoundly affect the egg productivity of a flock.

At ambient environmental temperatures of >3C, besides drops in egg production, birds will start to die, and mortality can reach 10 per cent.

However, at less extreme temperatures, heat stress is often overlooked as a cause of poor growth or decline in egg production.

To reduce heat stress, there are nature-based feed supplements on the market that are sustainable, validated, and can restore metabolism in heat-stressed birds .

Mannan-oligosaccharides and beta-glucans are known to improve the natural defence mechanism of chickens.

Others contain such mineral supplements as sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium that need replenishment.

There are plenty of water-soluble supplements that contain vitamin C, a stress buster, some dextrose, and antioxidants that suppress inflammatory responses to heat stress.

Keeping your flock healthy: The single most important disease control strategy in a new poultry farm is having knowledgeable staff or an attendant in charge of the flock.

The farm attendant should preferably stay on the farm and avoid visits to other poultry farms, slaughterhouses, or chicken markets to avoid introducing diseases into the poultry barns. If the flock suffers from infection of the gut, ovaries, or any other debilitating condition, egg production will be severely affected.

Several poultry diseases are known to cause delayed egg production, drops, and poor eggshell quality.

It is, therefore, imperative that poultry farmers seek the services of a qualified veterinarian to physically attend to the flocks to carry out an intensive investigation on the health and conditions of the birds to rule out any disease involvement.

Diseases like Newcastle, infectious bronchitis, egg drop syndrome, and mycoplasma can all contribute to this problem.

Red mite and worm infestations can cause severe blood loss, listlessness, poor feeding, and hence poor egg production.

These conditions should be treated as soon as they occur.

Dr Messo is the company veterinarian, Kenchic; [e-mail]