Detailed Explanation of Key Technical Points for Courtyard Meat Dog Farming

Meat dogs refer to those dogs raised primarily for their meat. Farming this kind of meat dog requires little investment and yields high profits. Therefore, the meat dog farming industry has been developing day by day. Meat dog farming requires a relatively large site, generally a large courtyard. So, what techniques are involved in courtyard meat dog farming? What precautions should be taken? Let's take a look together.

Courtyard Meat Dog Farming Techniques

1. Construction of Cages and Housing

1. Dogs should preferably be raised in kennels, generally 3 dogs per kennel. Dog cages are generally made of galvanized iron wire woven together, with No. 12 or No. 14 iron wire used for the cage bottom, and the mesh squares measuring 4 cm × 4 cm. For the construction of a dog farm, the dog farm should be built in a place with convenient water, power and transportation, far away from residential areas, sheltered from the wind and facing the sun, and with good drainage. The scope of the buildings and equipment should be determined according to the scale of raising. A large dog farm must have sheds, cage rooms, a feed processing room, a cold storage room, a dry feed warehouse, a veterinary room, a technical room, a preliminary hide processing room, etc.

2. For a small dog farm or courtyard raising, only cages and small rooms are needed. The dog house is used for shade and rain protection, and can be adapted to local conditions using local materials. If conditions permit, a farm can use angle iron, concrete piers, and asbestos tile structures; although the cost is higher, they are durable. The cage and housing construction should facilitate cleaning and make it convenient for catching dogs and for the management of the keepers.

3. The dog kennels should be kept clean and dry, cleaned frequently, and disinfected regularly. The dog's molting seasons each year are between March to May and September to November; keep them clean during this time.

4. To ensure a safe and quiet environment for the dog farm, a wall should be built around the dog farm, with a wall height of 2.5-3 m. A lime disinfection trough should be set up at the main entrance. Greening should be carried out around and within the farm to beautify the environment.

2. Key Points of Farming Management

1. Pay attention to cleanliness and hygiene

The dog kennel must be swept every day, with feces removed at any time, a major cleaning once a month with disinfection, and two thorough disinfections each year during the spring and autumn rainy seasons. For sick dogs, the bedding must be thoroughly removed and either burned in a centralized manner or buried deeply. When the weather is warm, the doors and windows of the dog kennel should be opened for ventilation and sunlight.

2. Maintain suitable temperature and humidity

The standard temperature inside the dog kennel is 13-15”C in winter and 15-17”C in summer. If the environmental temperature is too low, too much energy will be consumed, affecting growth and development, and young puppies are easily frozen to death; if the temperature is too

high, it will reduce the dog's appetite, slow growth, and may even cause heatstroke. In view of the characteristics that adult dogs tolerate cold but not heat, while young dogs tolerate heat but not cold, the main task for young dogs is to keep them warm, while for adult dogs the focus is on preventing heatstroke and cooling down. Pay attention to maintaining air circulation, avoid direct sunlight, and use mechanical forced ventilation when necessary. The humidity inside the dog kennel should be kept at 50—60%. When humidity is too high, heatstroke is more likely in summer, and in winter it favors bacterial reproduction and causes colds. When humidity is too low, dust inside the dog kennel increases, which harms the respiratory tract.

3. Feeding utensils should be disinfected regularly

Boiling can be used, or they can be soaked in 0.1% benzalkonium bromide solution for 20 minutes, or soaked in 2-4% caustic soda water, and finally rinsed clean with clear water. After each meal, the feeding utensils should be washed clean, and the leftover food should be thrown away.

4. Train the dogs to defecate and urinate at fixed locations, keep the dog kennel clean and hygienic, and reduce the occurrence of disease.

5. Frequently comb and wash, and trim the toenails

Brushing and washing the dog's body is beneficial to the dog's health and promotes blood circulation in the skin, and prevents external parasites. Trimming the toenails can prevent scratching the skin and causing local infection. For adult dogs, trim once a month; for lactating puppies, trim frequently.

6. Appropriate exercise

Appropriate exercise can promote metabolism, increase appetite, strengthen the physique, increase the libido and sperm vitality of breeding males, promote blood circulation in the fetuses of pregnant females, and ensure the health of the mother and fetuses. For fattening dogs, exercise should be reduced to promote growth and speed up marketing.

3. Disease Prevention and Control

1. To prevent and control dog diseases, the policy of “prevention is more important than treatment” must be implemented. Key prevention must be carried out for malignant infectious diseases of dogs; for general diseases, the management of feed and drinking water hygiene should be strengthened, and the herd should be better raised to improve the body's disease resistance.

2. First, strengthen the hygiene management of the animal farm and feed processing room. In daily operations, prevent stray cats and stray dogs from entering the site. All personnel entering and leaving the site must be disinfected to prevent bringing disease into the site. Feeding and drinking utensils must be scrubbed every day, disinfected once a week, and the site must also be swept every day, with the ground disinfected once every half month.

3. Second, control the feed properly. Do not bring in moldy, rotten, or spoiled feed, and it must not be fed to dogs. In some areas, dead lamb meat is used as the main feed; it must be cooked thoroughly before feeding. Meat of unknown origin should as much as possible not be fed. At the same time, attention should be paid to rodent control, because many diseases are spread by rats.

4. Do a good job of vaccination

1. Use products from legitimate manufacturers. At present, there are many domestic manufacturers producing animal vaccines, but some manufacturers have not conducted relatively systematic research on the characteristics of the viral pathogen, the immunogenicity of the vaccine strain, etc., and some have even only obtained a little vaccine strain from friends or from abroad. In this way, the background materials of the vaccine strain are unknown, which will inevitably result in poor quality and vaccination failure.

2. Correctly preserve and transport vaccines. Attenuated vaccines need to be stored at low temperature. If stored improperly, the titer will decrease, the immune effect will be reduced, and it may even fail.

3. A reasonable immunization program. Farms with relatively weak technical capacity often have frequent errors because they lack a reasonable immunization program. For example, if young animals are injected with vaccine immediately after weaning, the maternal antibodies of the young animals have not yet disappeared, and the antigen is neutralized by the antibodies, resulting in immunization failure.

4. Sufficient immunization dose. Some farms arbitrarily reduce the amount of vaccine in order to save costs. In addition, unskilled operation can cause missed injections, and insufficient injection dose cannot achieve the immune effect. If prevention work is done well, it can achieve twice the result with half the effort. Conversely, once a disease occurs, treatment and control become very difficult. Even if there are methods for treatment and control, the cost is relatively high. Especially for infectious diseases, it is almost impossible to completely eliminate them within a short period.

Benefits of Meat Dog Farming

1. Income from selling dogs

A female dog produces 2 litters per year, with an average of 6 surviving per litter. 10 female dogs produce a total of 120 surviving puppies. Raised and fattened in pens for 4-5 months, each averages 20 kg in body weight, and the selling price is 15 yuan per kg. The annual income from selling dogs totals 36,000 yuan.

2. Cost expenditures

1. Feed costs: With ecological farming, artificially bred insects solve the dogs' protein feed, and only mineral additives and a small amount of concentrated feed need to be supplemented. Each fattening dog costs 0.4 yuan per day for concentrated feed. 120 dogs are fattened for 4 months (from birth to sale is 4-5 months; they do not eat feed until 15 days after birth), with a total feed cost of 5,760 yuan. Each of 13 breeding dogs costs 0.45 yuan per day for concentrated feed, with an annual total cost of 2,135 yuan. The reserve breeding dogs were 2 months old when purchased and need to be raised for another 15 months (they can only be mated at the third estrus), with a feed cost of 0.4 yuan per day, totaling 2,340 yuan over 15 months. The cost of artificial insect breeding is about 1,000 yuan. Total feed cost is 11,240 yuan.

2. Other expenses: 500 yuan for water and electricity, 350 yuan for tools, and 600 yuan for epidemic prevention and disinfection drugs.

3. Total expenditure: a total of 12,690 yuan. With income and expenditure offset, the profit in that year can be 23,310 yuan.

Precautions for Meat Dog Farming

1. Select good breeding dogs: When introducing breeding stock from other farms, make clear the past health conditions of the population from which the dogs are introduced. Use synchronized estrus and repeat mating techniques to ensure that each female dog produces 2 litters per year and 12 survive.

2. Artificial insect breeding: The artificial insect breeding technique must be up to standard to ensure that the meat dogs obtain enough cheap high-protein feed.

3. Farming technology: Have skilled fattening technology and experience, and fatten in pens for 4.5 months, reaching a body weight of 20 kg.

4. Reasonable sales: Reduce the intermediate links in selling as much as possible, and sell directly to restaurants or meat dog processing plants whenever possible. If sold to dog dealers, the profit will be reduced by half. If you can slaughter and carry out deep processing of products yourself and supply the products to supermarkets, the profit can be increased by another 1 fold.

5. Strengthen quarantine work. Newly introduced dogs should be isolated and observed after arriving at the destination.

6. Do a good job of daily health checks, conduct regular monitoring, and treat problems early when found.

7. Do a good job of vaccination. The diseases in meat dogs that need to be controlled by vaccines include: canine distemper, parvoviral enteritis, encephalitis, Hendra virus, etc.

8. The prevention and control of parasites should begin before new meat dogs are introduced; at the same time, prevent non-infectious diseases; the design and construction of pens and cages should meet the biological characteristics and needs of the animals as much as possible.

It seems that the profit value of meat dogs is still quite high, and the farming technology is also simple. As long as farmers use scientific and reasonable feeding methods and pay attention to disease prevention and control, they can raise healthy meat dogs.