Four fold strategy to deal with heat stress.
Heat stress is one of the most challenging environment induced stressor in poultry production. In broilers heat stress could lead to reduced growth rate, poor feed conversion ratio and mortality. In layers and breeders heat stress causes decrease in egg production, poor egg quality, low hatchabilty and mortality. Besides growth and production bird also face low immunity challenge.
1.Environmental management :- Environmental management includes location and design of the farm, ventilation, sprinkling, shading, etc.
2 . Nutrition management :- Formulating the feed as per the metabolic condition of the birds in heat stress.
3 . Supplement Management :- Inclusion of feed supplements in the diet is also an effective approach to deal with heat stress. Supplementation of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics,essential oils, etc. is proven to be effective.
4.Water supplementation with electrolytes.
Besides these four measures selectionof breeds with increased capacity of coping with heat stress conditions (i.e., increased heat tolerance) is important to deal with heat stress.
