Essential Nutrients For Poultry

This article mainly consider mineral and vitamins as the essential nutrients for poultry. In the context of nutrition, a mineral is a chemical element required as an essential nutrient by organisms to perform functions necessary for life. Minerals originate in the earth and cannot be made by living organisms while Wikipedia defines a vitamin as an organic molecule (or related set of molecules) which is an essential micronutrient. That is, a substance which an organism needs in small quantities for the proper functioning of its metabolism but cannot synthesize, either at all or in sufficient quantities, and therefore must obtain through its diet.
One of the major problem related to domestic and commercial poultry farming is poor or inadequate feeding programme which results to vitamin and mineral deficiencies for the birds. This leads to deficiency diseases, especially when formulated feed are not used.

Minerals
Minerals are important to the growth, development and overall health of poultry. The followings are some of the important minerals and symptoms of mineral deficiencies:

Calcium: Poor egg shell quality and poor hatchability, rickets
Phosphorus: Rickets, poor egg shell quality and hatchability
Magnesium: Sudden death
Manganese: Perosis, poor hatchability
Iron: Anaemia
Copper: Anaemia
Iodine: Goitre
Zinc: Poor feathering, short bones
Cobalt: Slow growth, mortality, reduced hatchability

Poultry also require all known vitamins except vitamin C. The two classes of vitamins are water-soluble vitamin and fat-soluble vitamin. Some of the symptoms of a vitamin deficiency are as follows:

i) Fat Soluble Vitamins
Vitamin A: Decreased egg production, weakness and lack of growth
Vitamin D: Thin shelled eggs, reduced egg production, retarded growth, rickets
Vitamin E: Enlarged hocks, encephalomalacia (crazy chick disease)
Vitamin K: Prolonged blood clotting, intramuscular bleeding

ii) Water Soluble Vitamins
Thiamine (B1): Loss of appetite and death
Riboflavin (B2): Curly-toe paralysis, poor growth and poor egg production
Pantothenic Acid: Dermatitis and lesions on mouth and feet
Niacin: Bowed legs, inflammation of tongue and mouth cavity
Choline: Poor growth, fatty liver, decreased egg production
Vitamin B12: Anaemia, poor growth, embryonic mortality
Folic Acid: Poor growth, anaemia, poor feathering and egg production
Biotin: Dermatitis on feet and around eyes and beak

As indicated above, vitamin and mineral deficiencies can produce numerous health problems for chickens including in some cases, death. Thus, to prevent nutritional deficiencies, or when deficiency symptoms are noted, feeding a balanced poultry diet with the required vitamins and minerals should be practised; meaning that using aggregate quantity of a nutrient will prevent its deficiencies. In other way round, you can just add vitamin/mineral premix to your poultry feed if you notice any vitamin deficiency. Read more about Poultry Feed.

For quick updates and comments, follow us on our social media connects; FacebookPage, TwitterHandle and Instagram.  You can also subscribe and watch videos on our YouTube channel.  At Artib Farm, we materialize your satisfaction!

Cited work
Achieving maximum health and performance of poultry requires nutritionally balanced diets, writes Dan L. Cunningham, Extension Coordinator at the University of Georgia.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Medication And Vaccination Schedule For Broiler

Image
In poultry health management, drugs and vaccine are very essential. Proper care must be taken to avoid excess mortality in the poultry business. Below is the time table for medication and vaccine programme for Broilers. Day 1: Marek vaccine which is usually giving to the chicks at hatchery. On getting to your brooding pen, the chicks just need glucose or multivitamin to ease transportation stress, don't mix the two together to avoid contraindication. Then serve them the broiler starter feed. Day 2-4: Multivitamins in the morning, antibiotics in the afternoon. Day 5-7: Anti-coccidiosis in the morning and multivitamin in the afternoon. Day 8: Gumboro vaccine. Day 9: Multivitamins Day 10-12: Anti-coccidiosis and vitamins. Day 13: Lasota vaccine mix with milk: a tablespoon full of Cow Bell or any other powder milk in 5 litres of drinking water. Day 14-19: Multivitamins. Day 20: 2nd Gumboro vaccine. Day 21-23: Multivitamins. Day 24-26: Anti-coccidiosis. Day 27: 2nd Lasota. ...
Read more

Medication And Vaccination Schedule For Layer

Image
There are many factors like selection of good chicks, location of farm and labour in the eggs production, but where most farmers get it wrong is in the aspect of poultry health management which is the major function of proper medication and vaccination schedule. We have discussed  How To Vaccinate Birds in previous articles. Below is the schedule you can follow as guide based on your experience in poultry farming: Day 1 -- Multivitamins/glucose Day 2-5 -- Antibiotics and multivitamins Day 6 -- Multivitamins Day 7 -- LaSota vaccine Day 8 -- Multivitamins Day 9-12 -- Anticoccidial drug Day 13 -- Multivitamins Day 14 -- Gumboro vaccine Day 15 -- Multivitamins Day 16-20 -- Antibiotics + Vitamins Day 21 -- Gumboro (booster) vaccine Day 28 -- LaSota (booster) vaccine Week 5 -- Tyloxine based drug (as antiviral) Week 6 -- 1st deworming Week 8 -- Antibiotics drugs Week 9 -- 1st coryza Week 12 -- Lasota Week 13 -- 2nd coryza Week 14 -- 2nd deworming ...
Read more

Organic Treatment of CRD in Broilers

Image
There are several diseases that can be symptomatic in poultry farming as we have human. In fact, a sign may indicate different poultry diseases. Not everytime green poops will interpret Gumboro, it could be as a result feed the birds consumed. What we call cough in poultry is actually Chronic Respiratory Disease (CRD). CRD is a form of poultry disease that interferes the respiratory tract of the birds, it may cause labour breathing, chirping and slight cough. It is a common disease affecting broilers follows by Coccidiosis . We have talked about Causes, Symptoms and Inorganic Treatment of CRD in one of our previous articles.  In this article, we focus on organic treatment of cough in broilers. The required recipes are ginger, cayenne pepper, scent leaf and garlic which can be prepared as follows: 1.) 750gram each of ginger, garlic and cayenne pepper.  2.) 50gram of scent leaf.  3.) Blend all in 1 litre of water. You may also like to read more about: • The Use...
Read more