Bird Molting
Have you wondered why your birds or chickens are losing their feathers at a particular time in the year? Yes, like me, if you are a poultry farmer or you own a few chickens in your backyard. This experience is term molting.
Molting in chicken is a common phenomenon that happens at a specific time of the year. When your chickens start losing feathers and grow them back after about 20 weeks or more. There is every reason for a farmer or chicken owner to be scared because of the negative effect this would have on your farm during this period.
We will be looking at this topic under the following few headlines
- What is Molting (Definition)
- The two types of Molting
- The condition for moulting
- The sequence of molting in a typical bird
- Disadvantages of moulting
- Advantages of molting
- Summary and Conclusion
What is Molting?
Molting in birds can be defined as a natural season event. It is a process by which chickens or birds to some extent replace their old feathers with new ones. This can make the birds very ugly and sickly. This is a phenomenon that poultry farmers don’t like experiencing. However, it is for the wellbeing of the birds, because after this period in the bird’s life, it springs back to life, and production increases.
Types of Molting
There are two types of moulting in poultry; Natural Molting and Forced or Induced Molting
- Natural Molting is a moulting process that involved the complete replacement of old feathers with a new one under natural hormonal control without the intervention of the farmer or bird owners. Every bird experiences this at least once a year while others in some cases, twice in a year.
This type of moulting does not involve any external inducement or support mechanism. Purely natural by the bird.
- Forced or induced moulting in poultry, is a term in moulting that involve human intervention in starting and ending the moulting process. This could be done by following the following process below;
- There would be withdrawal of feed from the bird from 7-14 days
- This should be down in Autumn
- Zinc oxide 3-5gm/kg of feed for 14days
- Aluminium oxide 49/kg of feed for 14 days
- Progesterone 0.1ml/bird on alternate days for 14days
- CuSO4 4g/kg of feed for 14days
- After 14days, 50gm/day of ground maize
- For 4-6 weeks, then slowly increase the feed to 15-20gm/week
Condition for Forced or Induced molting
- The Pen temperature should be 75F
- The birds should not be underweight
- Birds should be free from any diseases, therefore must be very healthy
- Birds must not be stressed
- Ensure you deworm your birds before starting
- Provide 24hrs light for one week before you start the moulting process
The sequence of Molting in a typical bird
The following are the parts of defeathering as the birds undergo the moulting process.
- Head
- Neck
- Breast
- Back
- Fluff
- Abdomen
- Wing
- Tail
Disadvantages
The following should be taking note of while the birds are moulting, which every farmer should know to reduce tension.
- There would be a reduction in egg production
- The egg production cycle duration will also decrease
- Less peak production.
- Also, there will be lower grades of eggs
- And there would be high chances of diseases outbreak and mortality because the birds would have weak immune systems.
Advantages
There are many reasons to look forward to molting and afterwards. Listed are the advantages
- Usually, moulting duration is about 20weeks, this will reduce layers replacement cost, save rearing and brooding costs.
- There will be an improvement in production after moulting.
- There would also be an improvement in egg sizes, yoke and general quality
- There will be an increase in feeding efficiency
- There will be an increase in the number of big eggs and less small eggs production
Summary
Molting in birds can be forced or natural, in any case, the same advantages and disadvantages are experienced by the farmer if properly done, especially when all the conditions are well checked.
Conclusion
Molting is a good experience for the birds and the farmer because of it numerous advantages. However, if you want to enforce moulting, ensure your birds are healthy always.
You can use the comment box below for your contribution.