Water Usage and Broiler Peformance

One of the biggest frustrations facing broiler producers is not knowing how the flock is doing until after the birds have sold, by which time it is too late to do anything about it. Of course keeping up with daily mortality can provide a general idea of how well a flock is doing but, just because the mortality is “normal” doesn’t necessarily ensure a flock will end up at the top of the settlement sheet, let alone settle above average. Another rough measure is for a producer to “watch” ...their birds to see if they are “acting healthy” or their weights “look good”, which is not a bad thing to do but is hardly a precise measure of performance. Of course, if someone was really ambitious he/she could catch 100 birds each day and weigh them. The problem with this is that it is a rather serious time commitment, and making sure that a representative sample of birds are caught each day can be a challenge to say the least.