In case of raising poultry birds like chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese, peacocks, pigeons, quails etc. for egg and meat production, you must have to be very careful about poultry nutrition.
You can raise poultry birds for fulfilling your family nutritional demand and for commercial production purpose. People throughout the world are raising various types of poultry birds commercially from a long time ago.
The success of commercial poultry farming business depends on some important factors such as suitable housing, proper care, feed management and poultry nutrition.
Adequate quality foods keep the birds growing. Good housing facilities keep them free from adverse weather and other animals or predators.
And good care or management bring success. Availability of proper nutrition on poultry feed is also very important.
Why Poultry Nutrition is Important
Proper nutrition helps to keep the birds healthy and productive. The required nutrients for all types of poultry birds are 13 vitamins, 14 amino acids, 12 minerals and fatty acid.
Be more careful while feeding your birds. And ensure that all the nutrient ingredients are available in poultry feed.
Feed Ingredients
- Corn and soybean meal are the common and mostly used ingredients in poultry feed. This type of ingredients are highly available in the market. Those are low cost feeding ingredients and contain lots of energy. Both corn and soybean meal are also a great source of well balanced protein. This will increase poultry nutrition value and quality of their feed.
- Fish meal and meat meal contains high ratio of protein and amino acids, and those are very useful elements for proper poultry nutrition. The bones of fish and animal are great source of calcium and phosphorous. A well balanced poultry feed contains 2 to 5 percent of this ingredients. Percentage of fish meal or meat meal may vary depending on the types of poultry birds and their production purpose.
- Calcium and phosphorus are the major minerals for proper poultry nutrition. Fish and animal bone are the great sources of minerals. Minerals can also be found on other inorganic sources. Some plants also contain a little amount of this two minerals.
- Salt is a very important ingredients of poultry feed. You should add 0.2 to 0.5 percent of salt in regular poultry feed.
- Supplementary lipids are essential poultry nutrition elements. And you have to keep up to 5 percent supplementary lipids in the poultry feed. Try to minimize the heat increment.
- Try to add yellow corn as much as possible in the poultry feed. Corn gluten meal and alfalfa meal are great source of yellow pigmentation. This types of poultry nutrition elements are very useful for leg, skin and for formulating yolks inside the poultry eggs.
- You should add some non-nutritive ingredients such as antibiotic in the feed. This will help your birds for stimulating the growth and reducing various types of diseases. For improving the performance or production of your poultry birds, add some arsenicals and nitrofurans with their regular feed.
Vitamins
- The metabolic function of poultry birds, mostly depends on the mineral ingredients and vitamins. These ingredients are not too expensive. Mix mineral and vitamins with poultry feed in proper ratio. But the ratio depends on the product, availability and stability.
- Vitamin D3 and D2 is necessary for turkey birds.
- Vitamin E meet up the demand of lipids and works as antioxidant.
- To encounter deficiency, add some folocin and biotin in the poultry feed.
- Egg laying and breeding chicken needs a little amount of niacin.
- For the purpose of methylation, growing chickens require using betaine interchangely with choline.
- Vitamin B12 can help to minimize the demand of choline.
Energy
The young poultry birds (just after hatching) can’t make heat by themselves to warm their body. So they need food that is enriched with energy.
This energy will help to keep their body temperature moderate. The amount of energy depends on the age of birds and the weather condition.
Excessive and low energy, both are very harmful for poultry birds. So be careful while adding energy enriched ingredients in the regular poultry feed.
Protein
Protein is one of the most important feed elements for all types of poultry birds. The proper growth of poultry depends on the ratio of protein.
It helps to gain the sexual maturity, increase egg or meat production and the production of viable chickens. Use 10 to 10.5 percent of protein enriched feed for your laying hens.
For keeping growing chickens, increase ratio of protein. Snail powder and soybean meal are great source of protein for the poultry birds.
Amino Acid
Grain and soybean meal contains amino acids. Cottonseed is also a great source of amino acid.
Minerals
For proper growth and better production of your poultry birds, you have to add some mineral ingredients in their feed. Magnesium, Manganese, Zinc, Selenium, and Phosphorus are essential minerals for poultry birds.
Be very careful while using minerals with the feed. Excessive use of some minerals such as Zinc, can damage the palatability of poultry feed.
These are the common poultry nutrition facts. Ensure sufficient amount of nutrient elements are available in the feed.
Along with providing your poultry birds nutritious feed, always try to provide them sufficient amount of clean and fresh water according to their demand.
