Chicken, irrespective of age, drink approximately half their own weight in water per day !
Obviously the quality of all that water is crucial in keeping your flock fit. Nevertheless in reality, the bacteriological quality is often problematic due to insufficient attention to the water system as a whole from its source to the drinkers and to water sanitation in particular. In fact water quality standards are lacking for most of livestock farming whereas they exist for humans. Intensively raised animals – in contrast to their wild counterparts – require high drinking water standards, just like human civilisation made us very sensitive to water quality for our health.
Apart from physicochemical properties of drinking water, such as pH, hardness, metals and other electrolytes, the bacteriological quality of water is to be controlled frequently. The complete set up of the water system should be well thought over to avoid most of the contamination problems. Water treatment cannot overcome a badly configured system that allows for continuous contamination. Starting with a sound hardware and physicochemical set up, treatment chemicals can stabilise water quality to the optimum and safe level. Bear in mind that all parameters interact. For example a high pH may cause a reduced effect of certain disinfectants. Also consider withdrawing disinfectants dosage when administering medication.
For water sanitation often relatively simple chemicals are still being used. Hypochlorite and Hydrogen peroxide are two examples. Though effective under optimal physicochemical circumstances, these show large interferences with changing water quality leading to insufficient bacteria control and damage to the equipment due to corrosion.
Halamid® is an excellent compromise between effective pathogen control and flexibility vis-à-vis (fluctuating) water quality. Based on active chlorine, Halamid® is reliable for broad spectrum disinfection. The difference with hypochlorite or for example NaDCC is that its active chlorine is sufficiently strongly bound to stabilise and protect its activity from changing water qualities. Hence it provides under all circumstances a reliable water quality (and a chlorine residual) at the end of the line. The concentration used for killing, for example, all faecal germs possibly present in drinking water are not harmful to chicken nor does it reduce the drinking appetite.
Halamid® is easily dosed, stable in solution for several months (practical when making a stock solution) and stored in its original packing without loss of activity.
Do contact us, or your nearest distributor, if this raises questions, or in case you want to give it a try with Halamid® in your water treatment system.