₦airaland Forum

If you are looking for an alternative to chickens then duck farming is a good and viable option to consider.

It is economically viable good source of income, and a steady source of nutritious and tasty eggs and meat. You might as well consider raising ducks in your backyards, or as a commercial venture.

Though chickens have proven to be very good source of farm fresh eggs and meat, you cannot take that away from them.

If you really want to have an expansion and alternative to chickens then duke is a good option due to it hardiness.

Ducks can serve as a source of multiple streams of income and a good source of eggs and meat just like chickens.

Duck farming have supplied meat and eggs to many poor families, and not just supplying them with meat and eggs it has lifted a lot of them out of poverty.

Especially those from the rural community, I have seen families enjoying extra source of income from engaging in just backyard duck farming.

This highly profitable farming venture if only can be re-invented and pursued like chicken farming, it will lift a lot of families out of poverty.
[b]source:[/b]http://bnetlens.com.ng/duck-farming-good-alternative-to-chicken/

Nothing could be more devastating and frustrating than looking at your birds involved in feather eating and pecking in an aggressive manner.

The beauty and joy of any poultry farmer is obviously waking up every morning to look at your well feathered, colorful active birds jumping around signaling your arrival and expressing their state of good health.

It is therefore very important for you as a farmer to make deliberate effort in preventing and completely eliminating this depressing behavior in your flock.

[b]source:[/b]http://bnetlens.com.ng/feather-eating-pecking-prevention-management/

Depression is a common serious medical condition that negatively affects most people around the world, its affects the way you feel, the way you think your mode generally. It causes feelings of sadness, loss of interests, loneliness, sadness, emotional stress, worthlessness etc. It is a treatable condition and the following simple steps will help you get out of depression.

[b]source:[/b]http://bnetlens.com.ng/simple-natural-ways-to-overcome-depression/

Poultry Production: The Dangers of Cutting Corners

When it comes to poultry production virtually all poultry farmers especially backyard and small flock homestead owners have had one bitter experience or the other during their learning curve and to a larger extent it has everything to do with cutting corners to maximize profit.
The success of any poultry venture has to do with three cardinal points:

- Health of the birds.
- The quantity and quality of the feed used.
- Housing facility.
Several years back when we started poultry farming at a subsistence level we never considered buying drugs for our birds to be a serious issue.

We lost several of our birds to this common and highly preventable disease coccidiosis.

When you live in a humid wet region especially during the raining season couple with a leaking roof or poorly constructed chicken coop that allows rain drops into the chicken coop, thereby making the litter damp and wet.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/poultry-production-the-dangers-of-cutting-corners/

A happy relationship is never an accident someone always has to pay the price to make the relationship work. Each individual has to be prepared to work in harmony with the other person. Often times people link the availability of wealth and money to happiness and a successful relationship, though it is a very important factor in a successful relationship but is not the determining factor.

There are people who are poor in this world but their joy and peace of mind exceed far more than we can ever imagine, and there are others who have all the wealth and riches life has to offer but are utterly miserable and sad, and wish they had never met each other.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/why-some-relationship-fail/

BENEFIT OF FARMING

Watch life grow, it makes you become a naturalist, biologist and a scientist.
You leave a legacy of hard work for your children.
Gives you a sense of responsibility and care.
It teaches your family, children and the people around you the ethics of hard-work, responsibility and honesty.
It promotes communal and team work.
You know where your food comes from.
It keeps your mind occupy.
Provides natural food for your family, and you are sure of what you are eating.
Seeing your animals jump and excited especially when you are feeding them gives you great joy and that great feeling of responsibility, care and pride that some living creatures are dependent on you for survival.

source http://bnetlens.com.ng/why-i-love-farming-the-superb-benefit/

Dietary Supplements

We are often presented with beautiful well packaged vitamins and dietary supplements with a lot of promises that they can cure and remedy a lot of illness. The manufacturers of these products make extravagant promises about the abilities and properties of their drugs.

With convincing publicity about their potential benefits, born out of the desire to make more profit, the truth of the matter is that most of these claims are not backed up by clinical research. Therefore a lot of consumers are not aware of the possible harmful effects of such supplements to their body.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/dietary-supplements/

One of the most important factors in cow fattening aside from disease control and prevention. Feeding is the most singular factor that requires heavy investment by the farmer.
In order to have a healthy and well fed cow with appreciable weight gain within the shortest possible time. The farmer has to provide his cow with a well-balanced diet, highly nutritious hay and silage.

To achieve this feat, the farmer has to make some deliberate well planned effort and decision on how to maximize his profit, and minimize his cost of production as regarding feeding of his cow.

When it comes to cattle rearing not everybody is that fortunate or rich to own a cattle ranch, a large expanse of land for grazing cattle.

source: bnetlens.com.ng/cow-fattening-maximizing-your-profit-by-minimizing-your-cost-of-production/

None of us are immune to flies as long as we are constantly exposed to them on a daily bases, either in our homes, in restaurants, food market, hospitals, city parks, rural environment, working environment as we travelled, visits friends and family in different homes and neighborhood.

Flies are usually found in areas that are dirty and filthy, they live almost entirely on filthy environment. They breed on all kinds of decaying substance, like human waste, manure and waste from animals like cow, pigs, chicken, pigs etc.

They are also found around waste and garbage deposits. Each female fly is capable of laying over 1500 eggs. These young flies are then ready to start the cycle all over again thereby increasing and multiplying there population considerable.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/dangers-of-housefly/

After 21 weeks or more of anxiously waiting to pick your first fresh eggs from your laying hens, to your utter dismay and disappointment you discovered that your chickens are breaking and eating their eggs.

This can be a very disappointing and painful experience. This problem of egg eating and breaking is not uncommon and is very possible to prevent and stop it completely.

If your chicken are eating, drinking and breaking their eggs, you need to discourage them, and break this habit immediately. The longer you wait to correct this habit, the harder it will take to cure them of this terrible habit.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/egg-eating-why-your-chicken-are-eating-their-eggs-and-how-to-prevent-it/

Just like humans, rabbits deserved healthy food, and a well-balanced diets to keep them healthy and productive.

Rabbits enjoy good meal, you can feel and see it in them it makes them excited and happy, and I believe the goal of every prospective rabbit farmer is to see that his rabbits are full of life, healthy and are doing very well.

Here are some variety of feeds you can give to your rabbits to keep them healthy all year round, and also to succeed in your rabbit farming enterprise:

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/rabbits-how-to-feed-and-maximize-your-profits/

I remember back then, when we started poultry farming newly with limited knowledge on proper deep litter management we lost more than half of our flock to coccidiosis due to wet litter as a result of a faulty roof leakage. This provided a conducive environment for the Oocysts to thrive.

Deep litter system is a method of raising poultry birds kept in confinement. It is based on the repeated spreading of straw or sawdust material in an initial layer of litter about 4 inches deep.

As the birds defecate and soil the material, the material absorb the moisture new layers of litter are continuously added by the farmer to build up the litter to a depths of about 8”-12”.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/deep-litter-management-recipe-for-success-in-poultry-production/

Quite a number of us are suffering and dying slowly today from illnesses that ordinarily are not suppose to way us down if we engage in normal physical activities and house chores.

According to a verified and well documented research, it is confirmed that the aerobic and physical nature of household chores has a significant and mental benefit to our well being, most importantly it can improve the quality of life considerable.

Studies also revealed that individual’s especially elderly persons who engage in regular physical activities and house hold chores such as: mowing the lawn, folding our cloths, doing laundry, mopping the floor or sweeping our dwellings and so on.

All have the capacity to lower the risks of some major illnesses and improve on our general wellbeing.

Source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/physical-activities-how-lack-of-it-can-drain-life-out-of-you-gradually/

Living long is the desire of every human being alive today, making a few lifestyle changes and commitment can help you live longer.

Therefore your chances for living and staying healthy are more if you observe the following:
Cutting down on Alcohol and Quitting Smoking.
If you want to enjoy long and healthy life, quit smoking. Smoking is a leading cause of osteoporosis, emphysema, stroke and other chronic lung problems. Quitting smoking is perhaps the single most important decision that will turn around your health situation for the better.

It will go a long way in reducing and curbing altogether most of the terminal diseases that leads to death.

When you drink a lot of alcohol and eat less nutritious food over a long period of time you are definitely exposing your health to certain depreciating and very difficult to cure illness such as liver cirrhosis and lung cancer cause by consistent smoking and drinking.

[b]source:[/b]http://bnetlens.com.ng/tips-on-how-to-live-long-and-enjoy-healthy-life/

Tremendous Benefit of Cow Fattening

Cow fattening has changed the stories of many farmers around the world for good. With land becoming scarce due to urbanization and population explosion around the world.

The herders and farmers clashes especially in developing countries such as Nigeria, cow fattening (zero grazing) is therefore a very good option and better alternative to the normal grazing method.

Cow fattening is a method of buying emaciated, hungry and thin cow, restricting their movement in shades and feedlots, feeding them with well nourish balance diets to optimize their growth, weight and size for maximum profit.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/making-money-through-cow-fattening/

Headaches are natural way that your body informs you that all is not well with your system. It’s often an indication that there might be an underlining health issues that might require medical examination.

But in most cases is due to your day-to- day activities. It is a pretty common condition that many people deal with on a daily basis.

Ranging from uncomfortable to downright unbearable condition, headaches can disrupt your day-to-day life.

The best treatment for a sick headache is to prevent it from coming on. Migraines headaches always arise from the stress and strain of living.

There Are Some Suggestions For Treatment:

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/when-headache-strikes-simple-ways-to-relieve-it/

Most middle age and older adults, are optimistic about the quality of their lives as they age. Although they consider a satisfying marital and sexual relationship important to their quality of life.

Relationship with a spouse or partner is important to the quality of life, and so are close ties to friends and family.
It’s not being in a relationship that matters; it’s being in a long-term, happy relationship that’s beneficial to both partners. Poor and unhappy relationships are detrimental to health.

We tend to become more stressed and depressed, when we spend too much of our time with people who don’t value our friendship, who drain us, undermine us, or who don’t support us in so many ways.

As in young adulthood, relationships seems to be good for physical as well as mental health.
Socially isolated men those who were not married, had fewer than five friends and relatives, and did not belong, to any religious or faith base community groups were more likely to die of cardiovascular or heart related diseases, accidents, or suicide during the next few years than men with larger social networks.

Genuine and good Friendships is a powerful medium to having a strong emotional support and improving the general well-being, especially for women.
[b]source[/b]http://bnetlens.com.ng/improving-your-relationship-and-quality-of-life/

The human family is besieged with enemies all around it, the larger ones such as scorpions, snakes, tiger, and lions are easily detected and are not much of a problem except in some areas, but with caution can be taken care of.

We have far more too dangerous and deadly enemies called germs, they live around us and most of them cannot not be seen or detected with the ordinary human eyes except with the help of some sort of ultra powerful microscopic equipment.

Though some germs are harmless and beneficial to humans but considerable number of them are deadly and vicious and can kill within the shortest possible time without proper medical attention.

The first and best form of defense against these germs is avoiding them altogether or to get rid of them.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/protecting-families-deadly-vicious-enemies-germs/

One of the keys to the success of poultry production is the provision of a conducive environment devoid of any severe stressors such as high environmental temperature that could result to heat stress.

My birds are dyeing I just can’t explain what is happening, they look healthy they are not sick, they are all grown up, but they just kept dyeing.

These are the common words you hear from farmers especially broiler farmers experiencing death from heat stress, but can’t really explained what is happening.

The situation above simple portend heat stress in poultry chicken: is a situation whereby birds have difficulty balancing body heat production and the heat loss.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/heat-stress-management-practices-that-will-help-you-overcome-it-in-poultry-production/

Eggs are one of the most excellent sources of protein that could be gotten through simple and cheap means with deliberate effort been made to acquire it.

Meeting the nutritional needs of your family should be your utmost desire and goal. Considering the prevailing economic and financial situations in the country, looking for an excellent source of protein, iron and phosphorous, rich in vitamin A, D and B.

The importance of eggs to your health and that of your family cannot be quantify and the need to produce and have a steady supply of eggs to your family shouldn’t be taken with levity.
Keeping a number of few laying hens will guarantee you a steady supply of fresh healthy eggs.

Provided you follow the laws and regulation regarding keeping and rearing such birds in your local county and states. Especially for those living in cities and urban areas.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/eggs-the-perfect-food-its-nutritional-and-health-benefits/

Often times you forget the simple fact that each time you sit down to eat food or have a meal, you are about to make one of the most important decision on your health and life.

Your future, and your continual existence as a human being. Every single meal you eat has significant role to play in whether you are going to stay healthy or fall sick.

Several times you fall sick and suffer from so many illnesses that are avoidable ordinarily.

These illnesses may be as a result of unhealthy eating habits or food choices you are unknowingly or deliberately making.

You spend your money foolishly on unhealthy or faulty diets, that lacks nutrients and vitality and then you keep wondering why you and your family are always sick and lack energy and vitality to carryout your day to day activities.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/food-making-the-right-choice-can-keep-you-away-from-the-doctor-for-a-very-long-time/

Goat farming is gaining more and more grounds in Nigeria and the rest of the world due to its economic importance in the area of job creation and poverty alleviation.

Goats are popular with small holders because of their efficient conversion of feed into edible, high quality meat, milk, and hide. Goat’s meat accounts for 60% of worldwide meat consumption.

Goat meat contains low amounts of saturated fatty acids and cholesterol which makes it a healthier and preferable meat compared to other types of red meat.

Goat skins and wool are a veritable sources of raw material for the leather and textile industries which makes goat farming a highly profitable enterprise.

source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/churning-out-cash-through-goat-farming/

With improvement in medical science, health care and medical facilities all around the world especially in advance countries, all in a bid to live a healthier and longer life, yet we still experience decline in life expectancy rates in some parts of the world.

Today people are asking questions and are becoming more inquisitive as to why some people are living longer than others.

The good news is that no matter how young or old you are today there are evidence back with research that can help you live a long, healthy and fulfilled life. When you adopt the following lifestyle and make simple life choices and changes that can help you attain longevity:
source: http://bnetlens.com.ng/why-some-people-live-longer-than-others/

Turkeys are a beautiful birds to behold especially for children and visitors alike, they are a good and profitable birds to add to your homestead farm.

You can decide to add turkeys to your flock of birds either for fun, as pet or for more additional income on a small scale bases or on a larger production scale.

Which either way you go, Turkey farming is a highly profitable venture that you will never regrets by keeping some few flocks at home.

Turkey rearing might not be as popular as broiler or layer farming, in this part of the world, but the profit derive from keeping such exotic large birds cannot be quantify.

http://bnetlens.com.ng/turkeys-the-benefit-and-beauty-of-adding-this-wonderful-bird-to-your-homestead-flock/

Rabbit farming is a highly lucrative and profitable operation. Providing extra cash and income for those seeking multiple streams of income and providing full time employment for farmers that wants to go into large-scale, commercial production systems.

If you wants to provide highly nutritious, low-fat, low-cholesterol meat to your family with less financial input rabbit farming is the right way to go.

Rabbits are basically raise for their meat and fur, wool, or laboratory uses, their waste and urine are use in the agricultural sector, as a good source of organic manure in our gardens and backyard farms and for other research purposes.

Before starting out in rabbit production, choosing a particular breed is paramount to the success of the operation.

The various breeds of rabbit are suitable for each particular operation that you might want to embark on, ranging from large – scale industrial production, small scale backyard farming for extra cash and meat production, to just using the rabbits as household pets.

Medium and large breeds, such as the New Zealand, California, Dutch Gray, English Spot, Chinchilla, and Flemish Giant, have the most suitable size and conformation for producing meat and fur therefore suitable for small scale backyard farming.

White breeds of rabbits (e.g., New Zealand White and Californian) are the most prolific and the most desirable for commercial and large-scale industrial production because white skins usually bring higher prices and return on investment.

http://bnetlens.com.ng/how-to-engage-in-profitable-rabbit-farming/

Coccidiosis is a fairly common disease which is mostly prevalent with birds kept in confinement it is often called the disease of the lazy farmer. It is usually associated with either negligence of the flock by the poultry owner or complete ignorance by the farmer on how to prevent the disease.

Coccidiosis is a parasitic disease of the intestinal tract of animals caused by coccidian protozoa. It is usually connected with high relative humidity moisture in the air, dampness and wet litter.
The disease spreads from one animal to another by contact with infected feces or ingestion of infected tissue. Diarrhea, which may become bloody in severe cases, which is the primary symptom.

Most animals infected with coccidia are asymptomatic, but young or immunocompromised animals may suffer severe symptoms and death.

Coccidiosis is a highly preventable poultry diseases, when stringent measures are put in place from day one on chick’s arrival.
Oocyst that is the parasitic protozoan that causes coccidiosis cannot survive extreme high temperature, freezing temperature, and dryness.

Poultry farmers especially newbie are advised to start their new flock during dry season. This will reduce the incidence of coccidiosis.

Before placing order for your day old chicks, you have to provide ample space for your chicks, ensure dryness of the litter good ventilation outlet and inlet for fresh air.

Coccidiosis becomes a cause for concerned when birds are reared, under conditions that permit the build-up of infective oocysts in the environment. The intensive rearing of domestic chickens may provide these conditions.
http://bnetlens.com.ng/coccidiosis-disease-of-the-lazy-farmer/

Poultry farming is a worthwhile venture, it’s one of the businesses you can venture into without fear of competition whatsoever with good marketing plan and strategy.

Unlike businesses relating to Technology that is dynamic, it changes with time, there is constant improvement, what is invoke today could be obsolete in the next few years.

Agriculture specifically poultry farming, which is an aspect of livestock production is constantly evolving with new innovations in chicken breeds and farm equipment’s.

The good thing about poultry farming is that people will always need chicken meat in their diet. Apart from vegetarians, quite a large percentage of the world population rely on chicken meat as a source of animal protein.

Back to our topic. We are been bombarded with staggering figures about how you can make 100% profit on your investment without being told the nitty gritty and intricacies involve in the entire poultry business.

Poultry business just like any other business has risk, but with careful planning and determination you can reduce the risk to the barest minimum.

Before you venture into this business there are some fundamental issues you need to address which are pivotal to you success.
http://bnetlens.com.ng/poultry-business-why-most-people-fail/