There are numerous things that you can do to help your bird gain or maintain a healthy weight. However, if you suspect a loss in weight, you must immediately schedule an appointment with the vet and get a proper diagnosis. Weighing and measuring livestock is a primary step in ensuring the animals’ and birds’ health.
Understanding the Reason Behind the Weight Loss
Take your bird to an avian veterinarian to identify the root cause of the sudden weight loss. He can recommend a course of action to help the bird get back to a healthy weight. However, if no illness or problem has been detected, then the bird might need a change in the diet to get back to a healthy and ideal body condition. Probably, giving the pet larger amounts of its favorite foods may stimulate its appetite.
6 Tips to Maintain Healthy Bird Weight
1. Feed a Balanced Diet
You must choose a feed that is rich in nutrients, which can ensure that the bird reaches the optimum level of production. Feed variability will benefit them; feed the birds less human food and give them a high-fibre content to improve their overall nutrition intake and resistance to diseases.
2. Provide the Right Food Supplements
Supplements help in boosting the birds’ health and productivity by encouraging the growth of beneficial microbes in the rumen. Find supplements that help in absorbing dietary protein and increasing the appetite of the bird. Few supplements prevent gastrointestinal acidosis as well.
3. Use Technology
You must take advantage of technology like livestock scales to monitor the bird’s health in a consistent and accurate way. Moreover, technology can provide you with timely and accurate interpretations in the form of structural statistics. Various imaging tools and floor scales allow you to monitor the birds’ health remotely, thus helping you make informed decisions about rearing and feeding patterns from any location.
It is recommended that you use automated livestock scales as they are durable, accurate and cost-effective. They also help in monitoring birds’ health, evaluating their performance and measuring the feed conversion. These scales deliver accurate data; therefore, you can rely on them for making good management decisions.
4. Prevent Livestock Diseases
If the birds are imported from temperate climates, they would lack the resistance to humidity, parasites, heat and tropical diseases. Therefore, it is important to keep them in clean stalls to avoid disease vectors. Understand what the bird is prone to and take appropriate measures to combat diseases.
5. Stick to Traditional Farming Practices
Your bird can lose weight if you stop traditional farming practices and conventional grazing and replace them with industrial systems that don’t take natural factors into consideration. Changing farm practices will benefit only when the local breeds, resources, and feedstuffs are used and wastage is reduced. If you feed the local breeds with a balanced diet along with fresh water and supplements, they will remain healthy and be productive.
6. Track Animal Performance
You can track the performance of the bird using weighing scales and identify whether it is healthy or not. By monitoring its performance, you can identify diseases early on and even avert dangerous diseases from spreading to other farm animals. It would be wise to invest in a well-made, quality bird scale and keep a log of the bird’s weight every day. If you notice any fluctuation from the normal weight amounting to an ounce or more in either direction, check with an avian vet to ensure that your bird’s diet is on the right track. There are numerous scales available in the market – choose the one that fits your requirements and budget.
