Joining Sheila and Gretta on today's episode of The Turkey Talk Show, is Dr. David Rives, Executive Technical Services Manager for Phibro Animal Health. We discussed the importance of turkey postings and heard tips from Dr. Rives on how growers can get the most out of them.
Joining Sheila and Gretta on today's episode of The Turkey Talk Show, is Dr. David Rives, Executive Technical Services Manager for Phibro Animal Health. We discussed the importance of turkey postings and heard tips from Dr. Reed on how growers can get the most out of them.
Sheila talks about a funny story when she had to take birds to a posting session, and she pulled birds from the wrong flock that were younger than they should've been.
Dr. Rives explains the posting process. Growers bring in a sample of their birds to a central location, the vets/nutritionists/technicians./etc. Necropsy the birds to look for diseases and other issues that could be happening in their flocks they didn't know about. Postings are primarily done to check for coccidiosis, to look at their intestinal tracts for parasites. Postings are typically done when birds are 2-6 weeks old, because this is a good time to evaluate your initial cycle of vaccines, and there is still time to get ahead of a problem if you see a disease forming in a bird. Some growers do them monthly, quarterly, or when there is a change in their coccidiosis program. It is good to get them done regularly to see what is going on with your flocks, so you can improve their health.
Some tips Dr. Rives gives us to make sure you get the most out of your postings are to make sure the vets are doing all the necropsies in the same way, and for the farmers to take a good sample of their flocks and take average-sized birds from different areas of the barn. Growers are advised to stay and watch the posting sessions, so they can learn more about the birds, the diseases, and maybe so they can do necropsy themselves on their farms if they see a problem. Sometimes your vet or service rep can't get to your farm, so if growers can learn how to do this and know what to look for, they can easily send their vet pictures of problems they see in the necropsy to get insight quicker.
While these postings are beneficial to see what is going on, if you are having a specific problem, it is good to get your vets on your farm so they can see everything that is going on and help diagnose the problem.
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