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Though broilers often appear to be evenly distributed throughout a house, more times than not our eyes are deceiving us and we have uneven bird distribution.
Figures 1 and 2 are of the tunnel fan and tunnel inlet ends of a 50’ X 600’ broiler house with 20-day-old birds.
Figure 1. Tunnel fan end
Figure 2. Tunnel inlet end
At first glance bird density appears fairly uniform but when examined closely, it becomes apparent that there are more birds near the tunnel doors (far right of Figure 2) than in any other area of the house and we have uneven bird distribution.
The question are, of course, is this “slight” difference in bird density significant? Will it create problems in the future?
This particular house was equipped with two ultrasonic water meters, one for the tunnel inlet end, and one for the tunnel fan end (Figures 3 and 4).
Figure 3. Tunnel inlet end water meter/Figure 4. Cunnel fan end water meter
In addition to displaying total water usage, these ultrasonic water meters also display water flow rate.
Water meters can be a very useful tool in helping to determine if the birds are evenly spread between the two ends of a house because broiler water usage is a very good indicator of bird density.
If the water meters indicate that the birds are drinking more water on one end than the other, it is highly likely there are more birds on one end than the other.
In this particular case when the birds were 20 days old, the water meters were indicating that the birds on tunnel inlet end were drinking roughly 20% more water than those on the tunnel fan end (0.61 Vs. 0.46 gals/min).
The twenty percent difference in water usage indicated that there were very likely twenty percent more birds on the tunnel inlet end than the tunnel fan end of the house.
When the farm manager became aware of this fact he worked on moving birds from the tunnel inlet end to the tunnel fan end but only had limited success doing so.
Graphic 1. Daily Water Consumption
Graphic 1 illustrates daily water usage over the entire flock.
After the birds were turned out on Day 9 (three migration fences were installed on Day 14) there was roughly a 60% / 40% split in water usage between the tunnel inlet end and the tunnel fan end of the house.
Though the difference in water usage between the two ends of the house tended to decrease slightly toward the end of the flock ...
