Mike Persia (Virginia Tech) talks about the benefits of Direct-Fed Microbials (also Sulfur Amino Acid supplementation) to help manage the adverse effects of heat stress, in this interview during IPPE 2023 in Atlanta, USA.
This important topic has been on my radar as an animal nutritionist. I added the take-home message from this excellent talk to my list below. Thanks for sharing!
Some solutions to mitigate the adverse effects of heat stress:
1. Dietary considerations:
1.1. stimulate feed intake by feeding crumble; feed during the cool hours as much as possible; increase feeding frequency; top-dress the feed using oyster shell meal, molasses, etc.)
1.2. Increase dietary energy so the birds can get their nutrient requirements despite the impaired feed intake
1.3. Increase dietary amino acids level but not the crude protein level
1.4. Increase the levels of sulfur amino acids to help with antioxidant responses during heat stress
1.5. Add vitamin C to the diet
1.6. Adjust Dietary Electrolyte Balance (DEB) to at least 250mEq/kg
1.7. Sodium bicarbonate might help, especially if there is an eggshell problem
2. Proper ventilation strategy to remove the hot air from the barn (example: tunnel ventilation)
3. Proper water treatment (for example, cooling water as much as possible, which can be done by flushing the drinker line and replace with fresh water)
Dear Dr.Afrouzieh,
The broiler birds have tremendous appetite and they keep eating when feed is there.
Your 7 points are practical and proven. I follow these when our temperatures rise to beyond 40C. We feed the birds at 4am and advise all broiler farmers to lift the feeders to a higher level beyond the reach of the bird after 10am to be brought down again after 5pm.
Lot of people are trying to make business with plant products which do not work.
Cooling of houses with foggers and fans is an economical way to cool houses especially in areas with dry climate. Your work is good and I appreciate.
Thank you
Dr.Kotaiah
Indbro Reserach , India
Mohammad Afrouziyeh
Totally agree i just want to add some more that different organic acids especially citric acid in drinking water will definitely help. Moreover in high humid season, increase the air velocity by installing baffles in the house.
Yes, Dear Bertrand, I agree with you and I have also noticed increased feed intake and feed efficiency when birds are fed during cool hours.
Dr Ram Singh Bibyan
Dietary considerations 1.1 to 1.7 are excellent options.
Addition of plant based products hypo thermic medicines are not useful. Of course keeping the outside temperature is the best solution for birds with no sweat glands
My compliments to Dr. Mohammad for remembering these suggestions that are important for poultry producers, who forget them and then complain about the bad results.
Thank you. I agree with you on all aspects, but in recent decades feed cost has been a crucial issue for poultry production all over the world. So we are looking for sustainable and safe alternatives to minimize the cost of feed, heat stress, energy & protein ratio that really encourage the farmers for poultry production.
I normally advise farmers to feed their birds early in the morning say 6:30 to 7:30am and letter day of afternoon 5 to 6pm and increases the light to 7pm to enable them finish their feed. Fresh water can be served in the afternoon, anything that can add stress to the bords should be avoided
Use of paracetamol @10 mg/kg body weight through drinking water two hours prior to expected peak temperature is useful in maintaining body temperature of broilers.
In layers, paracetamol can be used through feed.
Salicylic acid in the same way can help as anti pyretic in extreme summer conditions and found useful to check heat stroke mortality especially for layer birds
For birds laying in battery cages the best approach is to decongest number of birds per cell. From 4 or 5 to 2. So that they can have space to flap their wings. The hot period is about 8 weeks. Then have Holden pens to drop the birds outside the battery cages in deep litters. Try to program the birds to start laying two weeks before the end of heat zones. So that they can peak just immediately after the hot period. Then you can reduce mortality of heat and laying stress and have prolonged periods of laying before another heat period. Having water refrigeration facilities to drop the temperature of their water to 10 Deg centigrade will have strong cooling effect on the layers. The nutritional aids are betaine, Vitamin C, Vitamin E goes a long way. For Broilers please in open housing avoid production during heat period or increase their spacing as much as possible. Broilers die a lot even in deep litters. Above all use radiant heat reflectors on the roof of the buildings.
Thanks for the good discussion. I suggest also lowering the antinutritional and allergenics by changing part of the protein source Soybean meal for SPC Soybean Protein Concentrate. This will challenge the gut development less and also increase the whole feed digestibility. Currently, when the Microbiota is becoming in evidence, modulating its patterns to better diversity and consequently higher performance, seems to be a proper strategy.
The best alternative is to keep he birds on wirefloor where they do not get litter infection. clean eggs are produced and mechanization possible. increasing the space is a good suggestion. giving up cages totally is suicidal considering the cannabolic endency of birds in large groups
Dear Sirs, to combat stress, the herbal mixture C-Power has proven to be a useful additive to combat stress, which can be defined as a stress adaptogen. "Reducing heat stress susceptibility in broilers" Asian Feed Magazine June/July 2021. In Summary C-Power is a natural phytogenic antioxidant that can help meeting nutritional requirement of vitamin C in poultry, and particularly during summer and other stress conditions. In the face of stress challenges, C-Power supplementation helps in ensuring optimal physiological functions, optimal immunocompetence attainment of homeostasis through its adaptogen activity, improvement in production and performance in broilers.
@Dr Charles Ibe - I fully agree, because the first physiological response in the body required when osmotic disturbances occure, specifically under heat stress conditions, is the osmolytic response; and Betaine is the most efficient osmolyte and acts as a first aid/ nutritional aid at the cells level, to restore the cell status to prevent dehydration and even apoptosis, in sever cases. Betaine during the heat stress periode should be add "on top" in the feed, or in drinking water.
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