Point of Cage VS point of Lay In chicken
This is a question that needed answer, and we are here to share light on the topic.
Many farmers don’t know the difference between point of lay and point of Cage in their chicken, be it layers, broilers, cockerel etc.
Your knowledge about this topic (point of lay VS point of cage) would help you make the right decisions on your Farms and you won’t fall to Fake people who ate out there to collect your money without doing anything or offering anything.
Point of Cage is the stage of a chicken, an age, maturity which your chicken would reach and they can be transferred into a cage (battery cage)
Point of cage means the maturity at which your chicken can now be transferred into a cage.
The cage we are talking about is the battery cage, or any other cage that had a wire gaze at the base.
The point of cage in chicken is always around 12weeks, it started from 12weeks to 16weeks. If your chicken are 12weeks old and upward, it means they can be transferred from the brooding room to a cage.
Why do we have to wait till they are twelve weeks? At 12 weeks, the chicken ate matured enough to handle the stress that comes along with the cage.
At 12 weeks, their leg can stand firmly on the cage without entering the hole in between the cages.
Point of cage doesn’t really apply to broilers, because they would reach maturity by 7-8weeks ,where you would sell them off.
In broilers, you put them inside cage as early as 4weeks old.
The importance of putting Birds in a cage is to make easy the cleaning of the chicken house, to make feeding easy, to make medications or giving of drugs easy, and for closer looks and examinations of chicken.
You can easily identify sick chicken from healthy chicken.
While
Point of Lay generally refers to the stage at which chicken can lay eggs, it means they have reached the maturity, a stage for them to start laying eggs.
Don’t be fooled or rushed by sellers who are using sugar coated mouth for you, point of lay in Chicken start around 16/17 weeks.
For practical purpose and to make things easy, please if you want to buy point of lay, make sure they are 20weeks old of age or more.
Make sure about 10% of the chicken are already laying, that means it’s a good business and a good point of lay.
Don’t buy chicken which have not started laying up to 10% or which are not 20weeks old.
Why? Some sellers don’t feed them well because of their profit, these would affect their maturity by slowing down their growth.
Age is just a number, don’t fall victim or else you will feed them for more weeks or even months before they start laying eggs. Have seen a case where the buyer feed them for more than 4 months after buying before the chicken start laying eggs.
Look for the history
Vaccination history: Have they collected all the necessary vaccines? At what interval are they vaccinated?
Medication history : How often do they take drugs, are they healthy?
Age history : How old are they? Do they look like what they say it is, a seller can lie about the age of the chicken just to sell it off
Feed history: How many bags of feed do they consume daily? Are they feed adequately or underfed?
There are some breeds that start laying at 26 weeks, approximately 6 months and two weeks.. These are the most common breed of chicken pullet that is very common in the markets these days..
I couldn’t talk more on this, I was called while writing this article, I couldn’t pick my mind off from where I drop it, but I think have touched what I need to touch.