If you are an outgrower with any of the leading contract poultry farming companies in the Philippines, you will be contractual obligated to comply with certain requirements such as the feeding schedules as well as the medication protocols that have been set forth in your agreements. One of the standard operating procedures is that you should feed the birds with antibiotics on a day to day basis as a way of flushing out the toxins and boosting the overall health and survivability of the birds.
This is especially true in intensive broiler production where the chickens now mature much faster. While in the past the chickens used to mature in 60 days, the maturity has since gone down to 45 days and then 32 days.
The very short production period is good for profitability in the poultry industry and it has been achieved not just from genetic selection but also with the help of better feed formulation as well as the use lots of artificial growth boosters and antibiotics that prevent many of the diseases in poultry like to inhibit growth.
The doses of antibiotics administered to the chickens increase gradually with weight gain in your poultry flock. The administration of the antibiotics will only step five days before the dressing.
This intensive use of antibiotics in modern commercial poultry production can be dangerous. A significant amount of these antibiotics eventually find their way to the human food chain and get transferred to our systems.
In most countries where the authorities are taking this issue more seriously, there now laws banning products that have high amount of antibiotic residues. These are products lead to potentially deadly antibiotic resistance and may even cause cancer in humans.
Where there is indiscriminate use of antibiotics, the antibiotics are generally fed to the poultry even when they are not suffering from flu or respiratory illnesses. Most farmers do this only as a precautionary measure to avoid potentially large losses due to an outbreak of diseases that can have an adverse impact on productivity.
Chickens are generally susceptible to flu in cases where there are abrupt changes temperature which can lead to flu or chronic respiratory illnesses. When this happens, the birds will simply refuse to eat leading to severe losses in stock. The growth of the birds is also so severely impacted that by the time they are being slaughtered, they are far below the expected weight.
Many contract growers try to eliminate these risks by feeding the birds with a high dose of antibiotics hoping that the birds will eventually recover. While some do, most don’t at all. They either die off or simply underperform for the rest of their life span.
Some farmers are either cutting down on the use of antibiotics or simply finding means of managing the health of the birds without the use of antibiotics. One option is to use Exquisite BD soil conditioner in the chicken’s water. This is distributed by Chong Ken Foo of Exquisite Focus.
Chickens given the Exquisite soil conditioner have been found to be healthier, bigger in size and with low mortality. They also grow very fast.
Biosecurity can also be an important tool in minimizing the use of antibiotics in your flock. By ensuring proper biosecurity, such as proper stocking density, good housing, proper hygiene and sanitation, it is possible to eliminate many of the disease causing agents and maintain a fairly healthy stock without resorting to widespread use of antibiotics.