Nowadays, more and more farms are choosing to buy battery cages to raise chickens. According to incomplete statistics of customer data, from 2018 to 2019 alone, 4,379 foreign buyers imported chicken cages and other related products from China. It also shows that the farmer’s demand for cage farming is gradually increasing, and cage farming has become a major trend in poultry breeding.
When chicks grow up, you may need to transfer them to a cage. Cage raising is better for a commercial farm because it saves space and feed. Moreover, the chickens are separated from the manure, so cage raising reduces the spread of disease and the risk of infection.
Please choose your suitable products between our A type battery cage and H type battery cage
The benefits of cage keeping are roughly divided into the following points:
1. High feeding density
Make full use of the chicken coop and various technical equipment to increase the feeding density of the flock. Generally, only 5-6 chickens per square meter can be raised on the ground, and up to 20 chickens can be raised by vertically overlapping three layers of cages. This greatly saves the ground and costs that are required to build chicken coops.
The laying hen cage breeding system is mainly composed of cage, feeding, drinking water, lighting, waste treatment, automatic egg collection, and environmental control systems, etc. The use of mechanized cage laying equipment can enable the production of commercial chickens or commercial eggs from hatching and brooding to the final cycle in a rhythmic manner.
Only 4.3 broiler breeders can be raised per square meter. The three-dimensional cage density is more than 3 times higher than the normal density, and the layer can raise more than 17 per square meter.
2. Save labor
The chickens are kept in cages without movement, water, feed troughs, or spawning boxes. Eggs can automatically roll out of the cage, making it easy to pick eggs. Therefore, it saves time for manure removal and other management. Generally, the elderly and women can raise them easily, and the labor efficiency is high.
Everything is already organized.
The poultry farmer will simply do the job of pouring food and water in the designated areas, cleaning the feces that drop, and packing the eggs. This reduces stress for the farmer and the need to employ many workers for poultry farms will be minimized. In the long run, poultry farming will be more rewarding for the poultry workers.
3. Reduce feed waste
Less waste of feed and low consumption. Typically, the feeding is flat, and the feed trough is placed on the ground in the house. The feed is also easy to throw away as waste. The chickens in cages are fed outside, and the chickens extend their heads to eat outside the grids, which eliminates the waste of feed. At the same time, keeping chickens in cages restricts the activities of the chickens, so the heat energy consumption is minimal, and the quietness of the chickens is ensured.
In free-range feeding, the feed is sprinkled directly on the ground, which is unhygienic. Also, a lot of the feed is not eaten, which results in a lot of waste. The cages use the trough to hold the feed, which can reasonably be used to both feed and reduce waste. In addition, the chicken cage uses a deep food trough, which can prevent the chickens from spraying feed in the pecking room. This improves the feed utilization rate and saves money for the farmers.
4. Low incidence of disease
Facilitate epidemic prevention and reduce disease. Keeping chickens in cages without contact between humans and chickens and chickens with manure can prevent or reduce the chance of disease infection, control the occurrence and prevalence of parasitic diseases and infectious diseases, improve the survival rate of chickens, and greatly reduce the expense of medicine.
Currently, the most commonly used laying hen cages are all-step cages, and the upper and lower cages do not overlap vertically so that the feces of each layer easily fall into the lowest dung ditch. The ground installed in the dung ditch uses a Scraper manure cleaner that will clean out the feces.
Wet chicken manure leads to a high concentration of ammonia, which damages your hens’ respiratory system and eyes. Cleaning chicken manure regularly is good for your chicken’s growth and laying eggs.
There are two ways to clean chicken manure: using a manure scraper machine (easy to install and cost-effective) or a manure convey belt machine (more effective, durable, and expensive).
After cleaning the chicken manure, don’t just throw it away. Dry manure can be sold directly. Fertilized manure can be used for plants or can provide a source of biogas.
However, if you’re drying chicken manure naturally, this requires a considerable amount of time and causes a bad smell in the chicken coop. Well, now you can use a chicken manure dehydrating machine to get dry manure in no time.
This chicken manure dryer can handle about 17m³ of fresh manure per house and produces about 2m³ dry manure per hour.
You just need to build a manure pit, which is used to store fresh manure and to separate the manure liquid. Then, a pump will suck and transfer fresh manure into the dehydrating machine.
With these two machines, you can turn your farm into a clean and green ecosystem.
5. Easy to manage
Chickens are housed in cages, which are easy to care for and supervise. It’s also easy to detect sick chickens faster and prevent chickens from pecking on the ground. The cage door of the ladder-type chicken cage is a push-pull design. If the chickens fight or if a disease occurs, the staff can easily catch and manage the chickens in time.
One worker can only manage 900 chickens when chickens are free-range. Now, each worker can manage 2000-2500 chickens when chickens are in cages. This greatly improves work efficiency.
6. High egg production rate
For poorly productive chickens, the feed can be adjusted to maintain good production levels. At the same time, there is no competition for food in the cages, and the chickens have a balanced intake of nutrients and normal development which can ensure stable and high production of the chickens.
Good ventilation conditions can make full use of natural conditions which creates conditions for improving the feeding environment of the flock.
The laying rate of laying hens is influenced by feeding management factors. The most important factors are temperature, light, and stress. Chickens are born without sweat glands and are more sensitive to high temperatures. Under a high-temperature environment, the feed intake of laying hens is reduced, and the intake of nutrients is insufficient which leads to a decrease in egg production. The egg production rate – chickens in the cage can enjoy good ventilation conditions and ensure that the chicken’s body temperature is maintained at a normal level, thereby increasing the egg production rate.
Lighting plays an important role in regulating the sexual maturity and growth of laying hens. In the case of short exposure time and low intensity, the hens are not sufficiently stimulated, which inhibits ovulation and egg production. But, if the exposure time is too long or if the intensity is too strong, it will cause the chickens to continue to lay eggs, which is easy to cause adverse reactions such as an addiction to pecking. Each layer of cages in the ladder-type chicken cage does not overlap. This ensures normal light time for the chicken and can also increase the egg production rate.
7. Easy to control temperature and humidity
Easy to control the temperature and humidity of the chicken house, easy to ventilate, and the environmental conditions around the chicken body are standardized.
Feeding chickens in a cage. The density of chickens is high, therefore the heat generated is high. As long as the heat insulation structure of the chicken house is reliable, the body heat emitted by the chickens can be kept warm. No additional heating equipment is required, and the heat of the chickens alone can maintain the temperature in the house around 10 degrees below zero when the outdoor temperature is minus 30 degrees Celsius.
Most of the chicken houses are closed or semi-closed and the automatic adjustment equipment is used to control the micro climate and lighting in the chicken house. The chicken house can be produced in a balanced manner throughout the year, achieving a high degree of mechanization and automation.
8. Scientific feeding
Feeding, water supply, and egg picking are all carried out on the outside of the cage, which not only keeps the feed, water, and eggs clean but also prevents the chickens from being disturbed and maintains a quiet environment so that the chickens can produce eggs in a stable and balanced manner.
Automatic feeding, drinking water, manure removal, wet curtain cooling, centralized management, automatic control, saving energy consumption, and reducing artificial breeding costs, greatly save the breeding efficiency of farmers.
In this mechanized breeding mode, the breeder can automatically complete feeding, egg collection, fecal removal, ventilation, control of temperature and humidity in the house, light intensity time, spray disinfectant and can add soluble medicine to the drinking water. Except for manually picking up sick chickens and dead chickens, insemination of breeding chickens, daily quarantine, and injection epidemic prevention, all processes can be automatically completed by using machines.
In the past two years, broiler farming equipment has even appeared to be able to slaughter the entire chicken house in batches and delivery equipment, which is a major breakthrough in the field of broiler breeding technology with short breeding cycles.
9. Reduce the breakage rate of eggs
Eggs produced by chickens are rolled directly out of the cage without coming into contact with feces. Not only is the egg breaking rate greatly reduced, but it can also be kept clean.
Keep chickens in cages. Because they are not in direct contact with the outside world, it’s important to pay attention to supplementing green feed, or adding vitamins and mineral additives to the feed.
10. Safe to use
The welding density of the bottom net and the top net of the cage can be adjusted to avoid the phenomenon of chickens hanging. The wire around the screen can be thickened to increase the pressure-bearing capacity of the cage.
Summary
In summary, cage farming can raise more chickens than flat farming. It saves manpower and material resources and can also increase egg production rates. In any way, feeding chickens in cages is the best choice for farmers.
The startup costs of feeding chickens in cages is not high, and the operation is easy, even novices can start quickly. Hightop will provide you with professional guidance and design. You only need to put forward your ideas, and Hightop will help you design your farm and chicken coop so that you are satisfied and worry-free.
For example, you plan to feed 10,000-layer chicken
If you have more than 10,000-layer chickens, you may need to get fully automatic equipment, including a battery cage, automatic chicken feeder, automatic egg collector, as well as a manure scraper (automatic manure removal system).
Hightop can design a chicken house for you according to the number of chickens and provide detailed design drawings. We can also include designs for floor space and the arrangement of chicken cages. Taking 10,000 laying hens as an example, Hightop 160-capacity 4-tier layer cages can be selected in countries such as Africa, which requires about 64 sets of cages. The following is a simple design diagram. The figure indicates the length, width, and height of the chicken coop. Customers who have not built a chicken house can build the chicken house according to the dimensions provided in the design drawings.
In addition, the conditions such as ventilation and lighting of the chicken coop are particularly good, which ensures a normal life for the chickens in the cage.
The automatic cage system is a new technology that can help you run a successful poultry farm business and Hightop is here to help you through the whole process.
Hope this article was helpful to you. Thank you for reading!
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