Nutritional alternatives to mitigate heat stress

Mr. Entz, we need to consider hot weather and/or hot water. If we have hot weather and cold water, we need to preserve the water temperature based on putting the pipe line deep in the floor to maintain it cool from the origin. In this case, flushing the water helps.

However, if the water comes hot from the origin, flushing does not work. Still, new negative pressure chicken houses projects are not considering to add a cooling water system. It will come in the future! It represents almost nothing in a very expensive project.

And why is it still not available? Because we do not give the right attention to water temperature and its bad consequences in broiler production!

What I have learned is you acclimate the flock in hotter months so they get used to the heat.

Regarding the use of sodium bicarbonate, it works, but the temperature of the water must be around 25 to 28ºC. Higher temperatures are detected by lingual thermosensors that restrict the water consumption, and the bicarbonate effect can be reduced.

Dear All! I like Dr. Ruiz's arguments very much. Restricting feeding, besides light control, is a very complicated issue once we depend on people to make the restriction, and it is impossible to see all farmers doing whatever should be done, based on the company´s recommendation. At the hottest period of the day, leave the chicken alone. This is a recommendation to broilers that are produced in conventional chicken houses. If the houses are negative pressure ventilated, the environment is ok, and no restriction should be recommended. Also, we need to be concerned with water temperature. In a hot environment, water can be hot, too. So, we need to be creative to reduce the water temperature, and that will help all bad consequences on a hot environment, regarding feed consumption. Once this is more complex to do, we start looking for solutions that impose cost to the production, but apparently it is easier to do.