Technical measures to prevent the death of broiler chicks

Meat chicks have relatively rapid growth and development, high nutritional requirements, imperfect thermoregulation during the chick period, and weak resistance to diseases. therefore, it is necessary to give meticulous care, a little negligence, various diseases will occur and die, in production, preventive measures must be taken to reduce losses.

1. Vaccinate in time in strict accordance with the immunization procedure. Chickens raised in closed flocks are easy to get sick if they are not careful, especially Marek's disease, Newcastle disease, bursa of Fabricius, infectious bronchitis and so on. Once these infectious diseases spread, it is very difficult to control, which will lead to the devastating loss of the whole flock and even the chicken farm. Therefore, it should be in line with the policy of prevention, and active immunization must be carried out according to the immunization procedure. The formulation of immunization procedures should vary according to the types of pathogenic microorganisms in this field or in this area. If chicken vaccines are introduced, effective immunization procedures must be asked from the breeding units. if there is no epidemic of a certain infectious disease in the area, the vaccine should not be vaccinated temporarily so as not to pollute the area because of vaccination. Only if there has been the occurrence and epidemic of this disease, can vaccination be used.

2. Drug prevention should be carried out in time. Relevant statistics show that chicken pullorum is the leading cause of death of chicks, and coccidiosis is also one of the main causes of death during brooding. According to the epidemiology of these two diseases, antibiotics should be added to the feed before 3 weeks of age. 0.2% oxytetracycline and 0.04% dysentery can be added to the feed to prevent the occurrence of white dysentery. Coccidiosis should be prevented after 15 days of age, especially in high density, warm and humid environment. Drugs such as chlorophenyl guanidine of 30-60ppm can be added to the feed. The drugs used must be weighed accurately and stirred evenly to avoid drug poisoning, and a coccidiosis drug should be replaced once after using 1Mel for 2 years to prevent drug resistance.

3. To prevent the rapid change of temperature and humidity and poor ventilation. If the heat preservation is not good and the temperature is low, it will be difficult for chicks to maintain body temperature balance for a long time, and serious chicks can freeze to death. If the indoor temperature is too high, occasionally open the doors and windows for ventilation, it is also easy to catch a cold; the indoor air is dirty and not ventilated enough; the temperature changes sharply; the use of moist, polluted bedding and moldy feed; these are often the causes of pneumonia in chicks; some emphasize heat preservation and poor ventilation, resulting in suffocation; some use high-power lamps to supply temperature, and heat to death due to high humidity. Too high temperature and insufficient humidity can lead to dehydration and shriveled claws of chicks. This is all due to the failure to adjust the temperature, humidity and air in the rearing room, resulting in a bad environment for raising chicks, which brings the consequences of growth retardation and death to the chicks. Among the above factors, temperature is the most important. The temperature used during the rearing period should be flexibly controlled according to the season, climate, type of rearing apparatus, chicken physique, age and so on. While maintaining the temperature of the nursery, do not ignore ventilation. But avoid the wind and wind blowing directly on the chicks. Humidity has a great impact on the growth and development of chicks. In the first 10 days, the indoor relative humidity was maintained at 60%, and moisture proof was paid attention to in the middle and later stages.

4. Supply balanced feed at full price to prevent nutritional diseases. A single variety of feed, some nutrients lack or insufficient, easy to cause a variety of nutritional deficiencies. Such as corn contains less calcium, phosphorus is also insufficient, long-term use of this feed chicks will occur skeletal deformity, physical weakening; vitamin d deficiency, it is easy to cause dysplasia, beak and bone weak and easy to bend, feet and legs weak or deformed; when selenium and vitamin e deficiency, suffer from white muscle disease, many parts of our country soil selenium deficiency, the feed produced in these areas also lack selenium, therefore, we must pay attention to adding selenium compounds in the feed. Malnutrition diseases can cause mass deaths if left untreated. Therefore, where conditional areas and farms provide high-quality full-price balanced diets according to feeding standards, if conditions are limited, a variety of feeds should be mixed to make nutrients complementary.

5. Strictly disinfect and prevent umbilical infection. The disinfection of incubators, brooding rooms, breeding eggs and all kinds of appliances is not strict, which makes Escherichia coli and staphylococci invade the yolk sac through poorly closed umbilical holes and cause inflammation. Therefore, the hatchery, nursery, breeding eggs and all kinds of appliances were disinfected by formalin fumigation. In addition, the big belly button chickens should be isolated and carefully nursed at a room temperature of 2 mi 3 degrees Celsius higher than the normal chicken body temperature, and the therapeutic amount of antibiotics should be added to the feed to reduce the mortality of the disease by strengthening feeding management.

6. Start drinking at the right time to prevent dehydration. For chicks raised in large numbers, due to the long transportation time, or the preparation work such as vaccination, the "drinking" time of the chicks is delayed too long, or the chicks cannot drink water, or the pores of the drinking fountains are blocked, or there are too few drinking fountains, resulting in untimely drinking water and excessive water loss of the chicken body. The dehydration of chicks is characterized by weight loss, shriveled claws, convulsions, eye drop, and finally collapse, paralysis and death. The first thing a newly hatched chick should do is to drink water within 24 hours, so that it begins to drink when it is not thirsty, promoting its new metabolism, and the phenomenon of binge drinking, dehydration and paralysis will not occur. Transported chicks should drink 5% glucose and 0.1% vitamin c solution within 3 hours in order to strengthen their physique, relieve stress and promote the excretion of harmful substances in the body.

7. Prevent poisoning and death. When using drugs to treat and prevent diseases, the calculation of drug dosage must be accurate, and excessive dosage will cause poisoning. When adding drugs to the feed, it must be stirred evenly, first mix well with a small amount of powder, and then gradually expand to the required content according to the prescribed proportion. Drugs that are insoluble in water cannot be given from drinking water, lest drugs precipitate at the bottom of the drinking fountain, resulting in excessive intake of some chicks. Do not put feed and pesticides together to cause pesticide poisoning; never use moldy and deteriorated feed to feed chicks; do a good job in indoor ventilation and guard against gas poisoning. All of the above negligence can cause irreparable losses.

8. To prevent death from being squeezed together. Squeezing to death in the heap often occurs in the chicken stage, mainly due to: excessive density and sudden decrease in room temperature; tilted heap pressure during handling, weighing or vaccination without timely evacuation; water cut and material cut off for too long, especially the crowding that occurs when feeding again after water cut off; frightened and agitated by factors such as a sudden power outage or jumping into rodent damage. Therefore, the amount of feeding should be determined according to the area of the chicken coop, and adequate food troughs and drinking fountains should be prepared. In the chick stage, 23 hours of light and 1 hour of dark training should be carried out to make it adapt to the dark environment.

9. Strengthen management to prevent the occurrence of all kinds of bad habits. Most of the serious addiction occurs after 3 weeks old, and the common ones are anal pecking, toe pecking and feather pecking. The main preventive measure is to stop pecking at the age of 5-9 days. At ordinary times, the management should be strengthened and the feeding density should not be too high; the content of various nutrients in formula feed should be reasonable, there should be no lack of inorganic salts and essential amino acids, and the light intensity should not be too strong and the time should not be too long.

10. Prevent animal damage. The biggest animal damage to chicks is rats, so they should be killed uniformly before brooding; doors and windows should be closed when entering and leaving the nursery, preferably blocked by nylon ropes; all holes in the room should be blocked.

To sum up, the causes of chicken death are various, but as long as we strengthen the sense of responsibility of breeders, strictly enforce various operating procedures, do a good job in various environmental conditions for brooding, and provide comprehensive and balanced feed for nutrition, strict measures for epidemic prevention and disease prevention, it is possible to reduce the death number of chicks, improve the survival rate of brooding, and achieve better economic benefits.