As part of an educational campaign started last fall, Ziggity Systems Inc. has released an uncut video of a test the company conducted to assess how useful the concept of flow rate is in helping poultry farmers effectively manage bird water intake.
Ziggity performed systematic tests that demonstrated how “flow rate” is not a good guide for achieving optimum bird performance. Earlier this year, Ziggity released a video of the tests, which showed that the flow rate measuring procedure is meaningless and should not be used in managing watering system pressure settings.
“We believe ‘drinker flow rate’ is an artificial concept that doesn’t relate to the actual way birds drink,” said the company. “Using flow rates can encourage producers to oversupply water and create wet litter that adversely effects bird health, or, in some cases, provide too little water, resulting in depressed weight. The video of this experiment vividly makes that clear and provides compelling evidence to show that flow rate tests are meaningless and should not be used.”
Ziggity’s website Poultry Watering U has posted an uncut version of the video “to remove any doubt of the test’s validity and let viewers see without edits how the test was conducted and the dramatic results it revealed.”
“We felt it important to make sure everyone is 100% certain that we used the same drinkers and water column pressure throughout the controlled testing. It is our hope that by viewing these videos poultry producers are encouraged to focus on what is really important — dry litter and bird performance, and not on flow rates. Focusing on this principle should help producers make more prudent decisions on drinker model selection and more effectively manage their watering systems and column pressure.”