Hello Hive

Broiler birds are the commonest poultry birds people eat here.
We have varying types of chicken, Broilers, Layers and others. These ones are the Agric engineered ones for better productivity of meat and eggs. The local chickens we raise at home under the free ranching system doesn't usually produce much meat or eggs as the Agric engineered ones.
The local chickens can eat any type of food and they are usually free within the compound but these layers have to be kept in well ventilated cages to protect them from so many factors.

Agric engineered birds must not eat eat soil or pick food from the soil, they are very fragile and contacts infections immediately when they eat soil or food from the soil.
They have special agric feeds that we feed these birds with sold in Agric store.

I have been learning about birds lately after visiting my neighbor poultry where she raises alot of different species of poultry animals and others.

And just yesterday we recorded 3death of the poultry birds, they are very matured birds at 15weeks now and can be eating.

This is the poultry cage where the birds are kept
Having lost 3birds we started making searches as to what can be the reason for the lost.
Some of the dangers that can cause death of poultry are

• Presence of Dangerous Animals like snake , a snake bite kills poultry bird resulting in losses

• Infection from exposure of birds to eating dirt and dust.

These are the two i was familiar with until yesterday. My neighbors raises the birds for meat production and as her own business(what she does to make money, raising birds fetches a good amount of money for her).
While some people consider it a sin to eat dead meat(animals that died on their own) others do not and because these birds were very bigs she decided to prepare the meat, while working on it and taking out the feathers, that was when we discovered that the body of the bird was very hot.

The weather conditions has been very hot lately and while we humans are lamenting the birds are dying instead. The weather is unbearable for them.

Weather factor is another thing to consider when raising poultry birds both for food or business purpose .
Even though their cages have been surrounded with barb wiring for proper ventilation we still lost these birds.

The cold season is the best time to raise birds as heat is one a major factor that can cause massive losses in poultry production.

What solutions do you think can be beneficial at this period to keep the remaining birds alive before we sell them out.

• It might expensive to run an AC in the bird cage. While the power supply might is usually poor at these season and AC needs electricity for it to be powered.

• Heat vaccines, I'm really not sure is there are vaccines that can help the birds endure hot weather.
  There are vaccines for infections and others which the birds received when they are barely few weeks.
  Nevertheless a good preventative method to keep them from infection should always be in place.

While we are recording losses in poultry birds the other animals are free, healthy and living their best life.

One solution that came to mind while rounding up this post is an idea that talks about restructuring of the poultry bird cages.

The cages have been roofed with zinc that is capable of absorbing heat making their cages hot.
Probably a different kind of roofing with grasses or any other materials that will not absorb heat. This will be a long term solution and suggestion for future farmers to prevent excessive heat in poultry farms that results in losses of bird.