What is poultry farm climate?
Poultry farm climate is the typical temperature which your birds will be exposed to within their rearing environment.
Why is poultry farm climate important?
Poultry farm climate both in and outside of the birdhouse directly affects their performance.
Their bodies are made to perform best within a certain range of temperatures.
Conditions outside of this range, their performance will dip.
Each breed of bird will have its own measure of tolerance. Some can bear extremes better than others.
But ultimately you want to work within the comfort zone for the type birds you have chosen.
Best practice
Understand your birds’ regulatory processes
Perhaps a not so well known fact is that your birds have no sweat glands.
That’s right – no sweat to cool them down when they overheat.
That said,
How exactly do they bring down their temperature if their environment heats up?
Truth is, it’s difficult.
Water is the ideal regulatory measure.
The bottom line is, your bird’s ability to maintain their internal conditions, like temperature (i.e. homeostasis) is limited,
And therefore climate control is key to helping them keep optimal conditions for production.
Further reading: Climate in poultry houses (Poultry Hub)
Know your target temperature range
Like any biochemical system,
The performance levels of the processes involved are highly temperature-sensitive.
Specialist chemical catalysts, called enzymes, made of protein can (if overheated) become irreparably changed which corrupts their ability to function.
The way they work is by maintaining very specific shapes at a molecular level which rely on stable temperatures.
But where heat exposure occurs above a given target temperature, their shape and form unravel and their chemical activity is rendered useless.
Where this occurs, the dependant chemical processes are hampered.
Digestion, growth and much more is controlled by such chemical helpers.
Know your bird’s target body and environmental temperatures.
Monitor and maintain.
Optimal housing features
Study the most effective poultry housing features which aid in maintaining stable environmental temperatures.
Also, consider the features which help ample ventilation too.
Make sure your chosen housing structures have built-in the ideal temperature regulatory measures.
Have an intervention plan
Know what you’ll do if climate conditions begin to shift away considerably from your target.
Have an intervention plan – a course of action that will kick in to swiftly and effectively bring things back to the norm.