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| Crop fill assessment |
Crop fill assessment is one of the measures of
determining the comfort of the birds in the brooder.
Crop fill assessment is when a poultry
attendant or farmer massages the crop of a chick to determine whether the
chicks have familiarized with the feed and water.
Making a crop fill assessment helps us to judge
appetite development in the chicks, health and to avoid a compromised growth
rate.
It also helps to improve flock growth rate
uniformity, and productivity.
With a poor crop fill, farmers experience high
mortality, poor growth rate, more small and weak chicks.
How is
it done?
You know, when you have just introduced chicks
in the brooder, we give them clean water which contains glucose. So they have
to go for about an hour without feed, but with good quality water that has
glucose.
After one hour, we then introduce feed, where
we spread super starter pellets on the brooder paper for the chicks to start
eating.
After about 3 hours in the brooder, we are
supposed to sample out chicks from different points of the brooder, and massage
their crops to feel if their crops are filled with any content. We are supposed
to pick at least 10 chicks from different points of the brooder. As we record
our findings:
1.
You may find that the crop is hard and full with content that feels
like feed on touching. This will mean the chicks have gained access to feed,
but cannot access water. This should concern you!
2. A rounded, full and soft crop signifies that the chicks have been
able to locate feed and water: they are doing okay.
3.
In some cases, you may find empty crops meaning no feed, no water!
This exercise should be repeated again when
birds have spent 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours and 48 hours.
Results from every crop check should be compared with the first results. We should have an improvement.
You must have more crops filled with both feed
and water. So, the crops must be soft, full rounded. This means there’s feed,
and water. This is safe.
Practicing the following measures below will
give you more crops filled with feed and water:
1.
Every stage of birds have their own equipment. Using big drinkers
and big feeders leads to empty crops. Birds cannot reach the water on big
drinkers and they cannot eat from big feeders so you may have more deaths with
empty crops. Use baby drinkers, lower the water lines, touch the nipples and
teach the chicks how to drink from the nipples, spread adequate feed (super
starter pellet) on the brooder paper.
2. Pre-heating the brooder helps chicks to find a comfortable
environment for them. Litter should be dry and warm otherwise chicks may just
become dull in cold environment and refuse to eat.
3. Replenishing feed and water. Remember you are supposed to put feeds
on the brooder paper for the first day, but if you put too much the chicks will
just defecate in the feed. So, put little feed at a time, when they finish it,
you put another...like that, like that...
For water, birds may refuse to drink if the
water is too warm! I advise that for manual drinkers, farmers replenish the
water every after 8 or 9 hours...so you put new one, or for piped water (nipple
lines), farmers should let the water floor out of the nipple pipes every 7 to 8
hours. The same to those using cage brooding. This is done to allow access to
new and fresh water.
4.
The quality of light in the brooder will determine whether your
birds will be able to see feed or not. You brooder must have a high light
intensity, enough for the birds to pick feed from the brooder paper always...otherwise
if they cannot see, they won't eat. Avoid spot lighting in the brooder.
5. 90% of the brooder floor should be covered with brooder paper to
reduce chances of chicks eating litter and to have more space to put feed.
6. Arrangements of feed and water. Put drinkers away from heat sources
to avoid water warming up; feed should not be far away from water, better to
align the feed and water adjacent but in a straight line.
You will need to put more supplementary
drinkers than the recommended number, to allow even the weakest chicks to
access water.
Note: Full and hard crops are an
indication of constipation on the next day or 2. Empty crops is an indicator of likely high mortality rate due to
failure of the birds to access feed and water!
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