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Preparing Pullets - What to Expect for the Transition to Lay

The transition from the pullet to the laying phase is critical to a bird's success throughout production. There are a lot of moving parts, especially in larger operations. Let's break down some key factors and strategies to set your birds up for success.

Pullets should be sufficiently developed, both in body size and organ development, before light stimulation occurs. Body weights can be a good indicator of these, so leading up to and throughout this transition, they should be monitored closely. Weekly body weights on a representative sample of your flock can help make sure that they are on track and make any needed adjustments to their feeding program.

These weights vary across different breeds and strains. Before you make the transition into the laying phase, ensure pullets have reached target body weights with little variation in overall uniformity in the flock.

Source : psu.edu

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Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.