Animal Health
Maximizing Birds Potential under Stressful Conditions
Many factors contribute to stress in animals. Among them are
management or husbandry practices, nutrition and environment. In
tropical countries, high environmental temperature is a major stressor
especially to poultry. In general, the ideal temperature for broilers to
obtain an optimum body weight is around 10-22 ºC, while in layers a
temperature range from 10-30 ºC is required for optimum egg production.
Above this ideal temperature, chicken performances will response
negatively.
However, there are ways to control or alleviate effects of heat
stress to chickens and one of this is by imposing proper nutrition and
feeding in the farm.
Depressing the feed intake is one of the main causes of poor
performance at high temperature. Adjusting the feeding practices such as
“wet- mash feeding”, using pellet or crumble, choice feeding of calcium
source and frequent feeding can be able to help in increasing feed
consumption. Moreover, manipulating the nutrient status of feeds can
also helps to reduce the effect of heat stress to poultry chickens. You
can achieve this through supplementation of considerable amount of fats
in the diet, which can enhance birds’ consumption. A diet with low
protein but with a balance of limiting essential amino acids is more
beneficial during hot period than a diet containing high protein.
Supplementing with additional electrolytes prevent alkalosis and drop in
feed intake that is caused by heat stress. In addition, vitamins
supplementation may help to improved bird performance at high
temperature. Vitamin A is poorly absorbed at high temperature whereas
Vitamin E boosts animal resistance and protecting cell membrane while B
vitamins boost feed intake and improve nutrient metabolism. All this
adjustment of nutrients needed by the chicken is of great significant
during hot period.
Zagro being committed in providing solution to the needs of farm
animals, innovated range of products that can help the animals counter
the effects of stress. With the help of these products, birds can
maximize their performance even under stress conditions. These products
include Zagrosol AD3E, Zagrosol Aminogen, Zagrosol Minpro, Amilyte and
Nilstress.
Zagrosol product lines are nutrient supplements via drinking water in
liquid form. These oral liquids are innovatively manufactured in such a
way that the bio-available nutrients like vitamin oils are completely
miscible in animals’ drinking water even without further mixing needed.
The Zagrosol AD3E contains significant amount of fat soluble vitamins
which can improve reproductive performance, improve fertility,
hatchability and bone formation of broiler breeders. Zagrosol Aminogen
is a blended liquid form of concentrated multivitamins and amino acids
which is a good supplement in improving uniform growth of flocks, weight
gain and feed conversion ratio especially in broilers. Zagrosol Minpro
on the other hand is an oral liquid supplement containing dietary trace
and macro minerals and amino acids. It can help improve reproductive
performance such as egg shell quality, hatchability, and maintain bone
health.
For farms that prefer using powder forms, Amilyte and Nilstress can
be the option. These powder supplements are highly soluble in water and
won’t just settle down on the drinkers. Amilyte contains the essential
nutrients vitamins, electrolytes and amino acids. It is a good fluid
therapy to replenish nutrients lost due to stress and avoid further
weight loss. Nilstress is a specially formulated anti-heat stress water
soluble supplement with exceptional solubility. It contains powerful
combinations of a well balanced key vitamins and electrolytes needed
especially at extreme temperature. At times of stress, Amilyte and
Nilstress improve the birds’ state of hydration and get them back on
feed.
Chickens will always tend to suffer from stress on each day of their
lives, thus countering its effect will economically improve their
productivity. With Zagro essential water supplements, birds’ potential
can be maximized.