How to Minimize Litter Caking Issues at the Beginning of a Flock
Published:February 8, 2021
Summary
Why does litter seem to suddenly cake over just prior to turning the birds out into full house? In many cases, it is simply because minimum ventilation fan settings are not being changed quickly enough to keep up with the rapidly increasing amount of moisture the chicks are adding to the litter. This often occurs because suggested minimum ventilation fan settings are often provided in terms of...
Very interesting Mike, first time I’ve seen min vent based on water consumption, seems logical, will take a look at what my early min vent settings are. I seem to have similar issues with litter capping over, although I am whole house brooding.
Does the min vent calculator run throughout the crop or just the first brooding stage. I would also ask, in the uk at this time of year outside temperatures vary massively between day and night, what would you base the outside temperature on the lower night time, or the higher day temperatures?
I am looking forward to trying this formula to hopefully correct issues I have. Look forward to hearing from you, keep up the excellent work, very informative.
Lee Baxter The minimum ventilation calculator is good for anytime during the flock to provide an estimate of how much you should be ventilating based on water consumption and inside/outside conditions. Technically during the night when temperatures are lower minimum ventilation rates tend to decrease...this is something you can experiment with the app. During cold weather the changes in theoretical minimum ventilation rates to remove moisture do not change a lot from day to night.
Lee Baxter Hi to both of you. I’m in Quebec, Canada and I also brood whole house. Our controller use some kind of integrated min ventilation calculator based on inside/outside temperature, inside actual RH and inside RH target. We also have a feature that made possible some manuals adjustments up or down for whatever reason we may encounter during flock. I find the most challenging period to avoir litter caking is around age 17-22 days where I find myself to be sure to keep inside RH around 55% max, after, I can ease a little and be fine with a target of 60-65% until end of flock or thinning at 35-37 days.
I think it’s due to the combination of maximum “biological activity” for relative weight of the birds, total live weight in the barn, relative high water consumption per birds weight, the end of rich second feed formulation (a little over in nutrients specs) and higher water/feed ratio before going on grower feed. If I manage to be “in advance” in my min ventilation setting until that critical moment of the flock, I can wish to see good litter conditions until end of flock.
Hi, Frederic, this is the same pattern I have found, we stock at 21 birds per m2 so by thinning at 32 days the sheds are very tight. I’m going to look at early min vent to try and keep humidity down a bit before that stage. I’m at 23 days now, 10500 liters of water going in humidity pushing 65%. Litter is poor already. Just as well I’ve got plenty of shavings!
Salam to All
I have seen most of the times, here in Pakistan that 30000 birds consume feed @10g/bird at day one and consumes almost 200 US gallons of water.
Moreover Relative Humidity less than 65% results Respiratory problems and also low weight gain in first week.
So what should be the strategy in these conditions to avoid litter cakings?
Good and educative write up, lack of this knowledge has been my major problem in my farm. Based on this information, I found out that the problems I do have with the birds at later stages do start from the brooder cage.
The litter always smells and cakes because of lack of ventilation to the extent that the birds do have eyes and nervous problems
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