Poultry housing is not built with the same orientation as the one we humans live. It is not what one wakes up one morning to build.
Poultry housing should have proper accessibility, safety, exterior appearance, and appropriateness of design. These are important aspects of housing for your poultry investment to thrive.
Poultry pens are rectangular in shape and are built in an east-west orientation i.e the longest axis is in the East-west direction which helps to minimize exposure to direct sunlight.
Direct sunlight in the pen causes heat stress and eventually mortality.
Please avoid corrugated Iron, tin roofing sheet, use asbestos roof instead.
Before you begin to build your poultry house, you should consider how you will access and maintain your poultry housing. You should choose a design that allows for easy access to nests, perches, feeders, and water. Suitable access will make it easier to clean all part of the pen.
Before making poultry housing system one should keep the following things in mind:
The house should protect birds from adverse climatic conditions.
It should have an easy and economical operation.
Should have an effective disease control measure.
You can do proper supervision
Before the selection of the location of poultry housing system:
Your poultry house shouldn’t be near the residential and industrial area to avoid eventual eviction especially in the middle of your business.
It should have proper access to road facilities.
It should have the basic amenities like water, feed and chicks transportation and electricity.
Wherever you can find farm labourers at relatively cheaper wages.
It should be located in an elevated area and should not be any water-logging.
It should have proper ventilation and should be in an open area
Before making layout preparation:
The layout should not allow visitors or outsiders vehicles near the birds.
The sheds should be ideally located that the fresh air first passes through the brooder pen, followed by grower and layer pen. This will prevent the spread of diseases from layer houses to brooder houses.
There should be a minimum distance of 50-100 feet between chick and grower pen and the distance between grower and layer pen should be of minimum *100 metres.
The egg store room, office and the feed storeroom should be located near the entrance to overcome the movement of people around the poultry sheds.
The disposal pit and sick room should be constructed only at the extreme of the site.????
For poultry housing, another important factor to consider is the poultry housing system and fencing options.
Poultry housing system determines around 40% of the rate of success and profitability of your poultry farming business.
A good poultry housing system is very important for the success of your poultry farming.
The following poultry housing system is generally commonly used in poultry farming:
1. Extensive Housing System: Free Range
2. Semi-Intensive Housing System: Standard semi-intensive unit and open run
3. Intensive Housing System:
we basically have 2 systems here;
Deep Litter
Battery Cage
Free Range System-: Under free range poultry farming system, birds are roaming around on their own in search for food.
This poultry housing system is not advisable for commercial poultry farming because of the high level of risks involved in it.
The intensive housing system is the best housing if you are Planning to run a poultry farm for commercial purposes and you intend getting the best out of the business, in terms of high birds’ productivity and efficiency. So you should consider for intensive housing system.
Deep Litter System-: This system involves spreading wood shavings on a concrete ground with the chickens placed on the floor and the shavings serving as a ‘cushion’ for them. The shavings are changed regularly, either by removing and replacing or by layering/raking. This system is used by a lot of poultry farmers because it increases efficiency and it is easier to manage large flocks of birds but it also allows the spread of diseases when there is an outbreak and also makes it difficult to fish out unproductive birds.
Battery Cage System-: As for the battery cage housing system, metal cages are made inside a building to house the birds. The cages are generally split into different compartments to keep small groups of birds. The cages also contain feeders and drinkers as well as laying nests. Birds droppings fall on the floor and it is cleaned mechanically by a scraper. This method is considered to be the most effective for layer farming but the major downside of this method is that it is more expensive to construct and maintain in comparison to other types of poultry housing systems.
Please note all 3 housing system has its own advantages and disadvantages. You will have to consider according to your requirements and capital
But whichever decision you want to make:
It's very important to make available good housing system in poultry
In order to protect your investment against adverse weather condition.
Protect birds against diseases.
It helps to keep birds in age groups for proper handling and effective management.
a good measure to protect birds from thieves/predators
proper housing enhances maximum productivity in the poultry system.
Good housing helps to increase the efficiency of feeding and feed utilization.
It also facilitates easy management and care
Pls with this????????????????????????, we are done with the training on Pen situation/orientation.