How to Raise Goslings in Summer? Feeding Management and Disease Prevention Methods
Because summer weather is hot, goslings breathe faster, have poor appetite, and are troubled by mosquitoes and flies. In addition, goslings' body functions are not fully developed and their disease resistance is weak. At this time, daily management should be strengthened to improve the survival rate of goslings and ensure breeding benefits. So how should goslings be raised in summer? How should they be fed and how should diseases be prevented?
Transport Management
After goslings hatch, take them out of the nest once the down is dry. Choose healthy goslings that are lively in behavior, have large and bright eyes, respond quickly, have good yolk absorption, can stand firmly after the down dries, have strong calls, and whose feet retract quickly when lifted by gripping the neck. Weak goslings with large abdomens or crooked heads should be culled.
Before transport, disinfect transport tools including vehicles and packaging boxes. During long-distance transport, check the condition of the goslings along the way and deal with any problems promptly. During transport, the temperature must not be too high; it is best to keep it at 25°C to 30°C. For land transport, it should be done in the early morning, evening, or at night when it is cool, and more ventilation holes should be left around the packaging boxes. When stacking, leave some gaps between the boxes to maintain air circulation, and provide rain protection facilities to prevent rain exposure. At the same time, reduce gosling density. For example, a gosling transport box usually holds about 60 goslings, but in summer it should be reduced to about 50.
Brooding Environment
In summer, daytime temperatures may exceed the temperature required for brooding, so attention should be paid to ventilation to keep the air in the brooding house fresh. Nighttime temperatures may be lower than the temperature required for brooding, so heating should be provided at this time. Never use natural temperature for brooding just because it is summer. A sunshade should be built at the activity area outside the brooding house, and the front wall should use nylon mesh or fencing.
After the goslings arrive, let them rest for a short while in the brooding house. Each batch of goslings includes large, medium, and small ones or strong and weak ones, so they must be reasonably grouped to achieve uniform growth and neat development of the whole flock. Place small and weak goslings closer to the heat source and let them move around within the enclosure for a while.
Brooding should preferably be done in small groups. The stocking density can be appropriately reduced according to brooding conditions. Generally, at 1 to 5 days of age, 20 to 25 per sq m; at 6 to 10 days of age, 15 to 20; at 11 to 15 days of age, 12 to 15; at 16 to 21 days of age, 8 to 12. The relative humidity in the brooding house should be kept at 55% to 60%. The house temperature should be 25°C to 28°C at 1 to 5 days of age, 23°C to 26°C at 6 to 10 days of age, 20°C to 24°C at 11 to 20 days of age, and 17°C to 20°C after 21 days of age. Inspect group by group during both day and night, and stir the goslings with your hands 4 to 5 times to prevent piling, which can cause freezing on top, overheating in the middle, and crushing underneath.
Feeding Methods
Appropriate feeding standards should be formulated according to differences in gosling breed, developmental stage, and production purpose. On the premise of ensuring nutritional content, rely on local resources as much as possible to reduce costs, meeting the physiological needs of goslings without causing nutritional waste, so that breeders can obtain greater economic benefits. Raw material quality should be good, with no mold, deterioration, or pesticide contamination. Multiple raw materials should be combined to ensure balanced nutrition, and the amount of certain feed ingredients should be controlled. For example, legume hay meal is rich in protein and can be used at 15% to 30% in the diet. Although feather meal and blood meal have high protein content, their digestibility is low, so the added amount should be below 5%.
It is advisable to adopt the feeding method of “fixed time, fixed amount, small but frequent feedings, and eighty percent full.” Goslings hatched from eggs laid by young female geese are given food at about 36 hours, while goslings hatched from eggs laid by adult female geese are given food at 24 hours. When all goslings can stand and move, give them their first drink. Provide 0.02% potassium permanganate boiled water, and during long-distance transport provide 5% glucose water. If transport time is too long, such as requiring more than 30 hours, chop green succulent feed and keep the forage length at 0.1 to 0.2 cm to let them feed freely, then give drinking water. The first drink is very important. Make sure every goose can drink water. If individual goslings are found not drinking, hold their head from behind the head and neck with your hand, gently fix both sides of the gosling's beak corners with your thumb and index finger with appropriate force, let it open its mouth, and dab water into the water 2 to 3 times. After the first drink, ensure clean and cool drinking water is always available and let the goslings move sufficiently. When goslings show pecking behavior, begin feeding. Generally, feed at 24 to 36 hours after hatching. If using wet mash feed, add small amounts frequently. In the first week, feed 12 times day and night; in the second week, feed 8 times day and night; in the third week, feed 6 times day and night. For each feeding, mix the feed on the spot and feed immediately to keep the feed fresh, increase palatability, ensure gosling feed intake, and promote growth. Goslings should avoid greasy substances. They can be fed washed, finely cut fresh tender green feed mixed with broken rice for 10 to 15 days, with a higher proportion of green feed. Feed 3 to 4 times during the day and 1 to 2 times at night, and provide clean drinking water. After 15 days, they can be fed all green feed, with bran, wheat bran, and a small amount of cornmeal and other concentrated feed supplemented at night.
The nutritional formula for this period is: 0 to 4 weeks, straw biological feed 70%, bone meal 1%, soybean cake 5%, fish meal 2.2%, cornmeal 18%, wheat bran 2.2%, salt 0.3%, shell powder 1%; 4 to 7 weeks, straw biological feed 75%, bone meal 1%, soybean cake 5%, fish meal 3.1%, cornmeal 15%, wheat bran 3.5%, salt 0.4%, shell powder 2%; 7 to 10 weeks, straw biological feed 85%, bone meal 1%, soybean cake 3%, fish meal 2.5%, cornmeal 5%, wheat bran 1%, salt 0.5%, shell powder 2%.
The first grazing is best chosen when the outside temperature is close to that of the brooding room. Take care to avoid rainstorms. Generally, bran and wheat bran are no longer supplemented. Grazing is best done from 5 to 9 a.m. and 6 to 8 p.m., and the rest of the time they can be kept in pens with appropriate supplemental concentrated feed. Each goose is supplemented daily with 100 grams of compound feed, mixed with chopped green feed. The amount of green feed fed should be about 20% of the compound feed amount. Geese aged 35 to 50 days should be kept in pens, with a stocking density of 6 per sq m. Each day, feed 100 to 150 grams per goose of compound feed mixed evenly with chopped green feed. The ratio of compound feed to green feed is 3:7. Provide sufficient drinking water, and let the geese enter water for about 30 minutes every other day. For geese aged 51 to 60 days, feed each goose about 800 grams of compound feed per day in 5 to 6 feedings.
Disease Prevention and Control
During the brooding stage, focus on preventing and controlling gosling influenza and gosling plague. Both are acute infectious diseases of goslings with similar symptoms, and both are characterized by rapid onset of fever, rapid death, and high mortality.
Gosling Plague The pathogen of gosling plague is gosling plague virus. It is most likely to occur at 7 to 10 days of age, and geese over 30 days of age do not develop the disease. It can occur in all four seasons. Symptoms include severe diarrhea, passing grayish-white or pale yellowish-green rice-water-like thin feces mixed with bubbles. Breathing is difficult, often with nasal snoring, and serous secretions often flow from the nostrils. On necropsy, lesions can be seen in the digestive tract. The small intestine shows fibrinous necrotic inflammation, the intestinal mucosa necroses and sloughs off, and hard emboli form in the small intestine and block the intestinal tract.
Strictly implement sanitation and epidemic prevention systems, frequently clean and disinfect pens, and strictly carry out isolation, observation, and quarantine procedures for newly introduced goslings to strictly prevent the introduction of disease. Inject vaccines regularly. One month before the female goose lays eggs, inject each female goose with 1 ml of 1:100 gosling plague vaccine. Goslings hatched from eggs laid by female geese 2 weeks after injection all have immunity to gosling plague. In gosling plague epidemic areas, subcutaneously inject each newly hatched gosling with 0.5 ml of anti-gosling plague serum, which can provide effective prevention. When there is concurrent infection, effective symptomatic treatment measures can be taken according to the condition.
Goose Influenza The pathogen of goose influenza is Shigella bacillus. It occurs mostly in spring and autumn, and goslings around 30 days of age have a relatively high incidence. On necropsy, the main lesions are in the respiratory tract. There is a large amount of semi-transparent serous or mucous secretions in the nasal cavity, larynx, and trachea, hemorrhage on the inner and outer membranes of the heart, and fibrinous pericarditis.
Careful management should be taken, attention should be paid to environmental sanitation, and goslings should be prevented from getting wet in rain and chilled due to weather changes. Oral or injectable sulfonamide drugs can be used for treatment: each gosling is first given 0.25 grams (half a tablet) of sulfadiazine tablets orally, then 1/4 tablet orally every 4 hours thereafter; each gosling is first injected intramuscularly with 1 ml of 20% sulfadiazine injection, then injected with 0.5 ml every 4 hours thereafter; each gosling is first injected intramuscularly with 1 ml of sulfadimethylpyrimidine injection, then injected with 0.5 ml every 4 hours thereafter.
Treatment with antibiotic drugs: use 20,000 to 50,000 international units of penicillin, dilute and dissolve in 2 to 5 ml of water for injection, then inject intramuscularly at one time, once every 6 hours, for 2 to 3 consecutive days. Or use 5,000 international units of penicillin, dissolve in an appropriate amount of water, and let them drink it within 1 to 2 hours; use 10,000 to 20,000 international units of streptomycin, dilute with 2 to 5 ml of normal saline, then inject intramuscularly at one time, once every 12 hours, until symptoms disappear; use 12 to 15 mg of chloramphenicol, inject intramuscularly at one time, twice a day, and generally 4 treatments can cure it; use tetracycline or oxytetracycline mixed into feed or drinking water for oral administration, 200 mg per day, for 3 to 5 consecutive days.