Poultry

Feeding Poultry

• Feed hens according to appropriate standards to ensure their fast growth, and good production;

• Feeds have been designed following chicken growth stages: chicks, young chicken and egg laying/ grown up broilers
• Apart from feeds, chicken must drink enough water. Water is provided in the chicken house and they drink it as they wish,

• For those who can afford concentrated feeds to feed their chickens, here are the requirements in terms of quantities to be provided on daily basis :

Table 1: Feed quantities for Egg laying and broilers

Production

• You can raise egg laying hens, or broilers as well
• Two months after birth, a broiler can reach the weight of 1.6kg
• When slaughtered, poultry output is 70% (a chicken weighing 1.6kg will produce 1.120 kg of meat)
• Local breed chickens can give an output of approximately 60%
• One Rhode Island Red hen can lay 220 eggs per year if it is appropriately cared for, that is a laying rate of 60%
• One Derco hen, if adequately cared for, can give 250 eggs per year, that is a laying rate of 69%.
• There exist other improved breeds which lay up to 300 eggs per year, especially Warren.
• One local breed hen can lay 60 to 90 eggs per year. But local breed of hens differ, some are of good quality.

Disease and control measures (Poultry)

Table 2: Diseases for Egg laying hens and broilers and control measures

Vaccines

Egg laying hens and broilers must be vaccinated. Vaccines for each category, timing and measurements are highlighted in the following tables.

Table 3: Vaccines for egg laying hens

Table 4: Vaccines for broilers

Poultry Reproduction

• The hen starts to lay eggs at 5 months of age
• The incubation lasts for 21days
• The hen can lay eggs even without the cock, but such non- fertilized eggs cannot give birth to chicks;
• One cock is able to fertilize 10 hens eggs
• After one year of laying (350 days), a hen must be reformed.

Poultry Record Keeping

• A poultry farmer has to keep records as follows:
  • Inventory: inventory of available layers or broilers.
  • Health records: including birth dates, mortality, signs and symptoms, diagnosis, treatments and vaccinations, etc.
  • Feed consumption: amounts of feeds to  provide following the requirements of each category.
  • Egg production records: recording produced eggs ( normal, abnormal, breaks),
  • For broilers, weight records are taken every week and meat production records are kept.

  8. Breeds

  In Rwanda, we have  the following poultry breeds:

  – Egg layers: Isa Brown

Isa brown chicken Personality: ISA Brown Chickens are one of the best breed for a first time chicken owner, they originate from France and weight around 4.5-6 kg for adults. They are  extremely personable and get along with humans extremely well. Isa Browns are also a great choice for the family with children, whether the kids are at home or school age, ISA browns are gentle chickens that tend not to be flighty around children as some other breeds are. They lay more than 300 eggs annually.

– Broilers: Cobb 500

Cobb 500 broilers are:

• Lowest cost of live weight produced
• Superior performance on lower cost feed rations
• Most feed efficient
• Excellent growth rate
• Best broiler uniformity for processing
• Competitive breeder

Local chicken