Livestock Knowledge

Preventing Disease Spread in Backyard Flocks

Preventing Disease Spread in Backyard Flocks

Backyard flocks are generally healthy, like the people who keep them. Just like their keepers, though, illness can strike. You can minimise the damage by protecting your flock from disease and limiting it if and when one of your chickens shows up sick, writes Christine Heinrichs.

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Improving Performance of Broilers Fed Lower Digestible Protein Diets

Improving Performance of Broilers Fed Lower Digestible Protein Diets

The search for alternative protein sources in feedstuffs, is a field of research that is gaining considerable attention. For example, soy bean meal (SBM) and fish meal are easily digestible and have traditionally been the main sources of proteins in poultry diets.

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The seductive promise of Vietnam’s pork sector

The seductive promise of Vietnam’s pork sector

One recent estimate suggests that the average number of finished pigs per sow in Vietnam is 12.3 pigs per sow per year (the same source estimates the performance of modernised pig farms in Vietnam at 20.5 pigs per sow per year). Note also that these figures do not take account of the ratio of muscle to fat that is probably much lower in Vietnam's average carcass profile.

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Academic gets wild about raising pigs

Academic gets wild about raising pigs

In the modern era of farming and animal rearing, the introduction of chemicals in our food has caused numerous ailments for humans. As a result, the meat of wild pigs has gained popularity since these pigs are raised in a half-wild state, and their diet of vegetables is all organic, creating much leaner, tenderer pork, with less fat compared to the meat of other pigs, says Van.

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