BROILER SUDDEN DEATH

Its this kind of a situation, where you’ve just gone out of the poultry house when every bird is very OK, just to be surprised by un usual mortality after a few minutes….even when you check everything the bird is OK!!

We may term this a SUDDEN DEATH!

SUDDEN DEATH SYNDROME can happen between day 3 up to when a bird grows to selling time.

But when you try to open the bird, you may find the heart has some bits of blood clots or the lungs may look swollen with a little fluid in them!

When sudden death syndrome is happening, the birds flips its wings several times, stretches its neck, may run around and collapse, but still die facing up.

Sudden death syndrome happens when:

1. The birds have a limited supply of oxygen, a situation where a farmer closes everywhere on the house thinking that he has cut off wind to create warmth.
2. When we give a lot of glucose supplements to chicks for longer time than required….to much glucose is not good to the chicks. Atleast let glucose be given for the first day only! But prolonged supply of glucose to the birds can cause flip over/ sudden death syndrome
3. High levels of carbohydrates in the feeds! There’s this tendency by farmers to substitute bran with broken maize which is not good! Farmers should stop it……did you know that even the texture of feed can lead to flip overs??? Farmers using pellets get this problem easily than those on mash or these small crumbles!
4. Sudden death syndrome can also happen when there’s a lot of growth stimulation, mainly by giving lots of additives, prolonged hours of light, too much feeds, a lot of maize.

DID YOU KNOW
The heart and other internal organs of a broiler fail to support the over growing body, hence a “SYSTEM FAILURE” which leads to death!
This is a short explanation of sudden death syndrome.

Is it heart attack in humans?

Solution
Slow down the growth rate of the birds by: reducing the light duration to 6 hours at night, reduce the quantity of feed you give to the birds, use a well balanced feed, reduce on the energy levels of feed, improve ventilation, and do proper supplementation of broilers.