Job opportunities have reduced due to increased technological advances. This has forced many people to venture into business for survival. The businesses, too, come with their painful pills to swallow.
A farmer Mwandingi Tangi took to his social media page to lament how increased temperature led to the death of 129 chickens that were only a week due for slaughter.
“On this fateful day, I woke up in a good mood. I opened the door of the coop, dead chicken lying around to tell the truth, I broke into tears. I had lost 129 chickens in one night with just a week to slaughter,” Tangi emotionally said.
He started a journey of checking what could be the course of the deaths. He spent hours doing inspections to see if he could find something unusual. He checked their posture, behavior, eyes, head, necks, and the way they were breathing.
What were the findings? At that time, the temperature outside was 35°c and 29°c inside. This is too hot for the chickens; they are supposed to drink a lot of water to cool their bodies down.
The water in the drinking lines was very hot; not even a human would drink it with the kind of heat experienced.
The chickens were heat-stressed and were not drinking the water because it was warm or hot. The heavy breathing tires them physically. He explains that later in the afternoon or evening, when the temperature drops and they start drinking water, they get heart attacks and they die.
“As much as it is hot, you can’t even see a chicken drinking water. What we did was flash the hot water out of the lines until there was cold water in supply. There’s still more to be done to find a solution,” he mentioned.
After two days of close and strict observation, there were no unusual behaviors within the flock, and only four mortalities were recorded on the third day, of which three were runners.
He concluded that our high mortality was not due to illness but heat stroke.
“The coop has eight Whirlybird vents that help extract hot air as well as ventilation. It also has side curtains that also help with air circulation. High day temp in summer in the Southern parts of Namibia can be as high as 42°c,” he wrote.
He said he was still looking for ways to reduce the temperature within the coop during the day, especially the hot air that comes from the sides when the curtains are open.
“Finally we got to slaughter our chicken. It wasn’t the best cycle at all, and had a mortality rate of 7.8%. The highest we’ve had. Grateful for the challenges and lessons learned from this,” he added.
He concluded that he was not ready to give up on farming. People need to eat, and he promised to do the best he can to the best of his abilities to feed them.
