DAGUPAN CITY-A thousand heads of chicken died of heat stroke in a poultry farm in Pozorrubio town on Thursday (April 19), two days after a 9-hour power outage in eastern Pangasinan on April 17, according to a belated report from the municipal agriculturist.
“The poultry farm’s back-up generator may not have worked, causing the broilers to eventually die from the heat,” said Clarito Corpuz, Pozorrubio agriculturist, in an interview Friday (April 20).
Temperatures recorded at the government weather station in Dagupan City since the official start of the dry season on April 10 averaged at least 30 degrees Celsius, with the heat index reaching up to 45 degrees.
The “heat index” is the degree of heat which people experience physically.
Corpuz said more broilers could have died had the poultry owner not harvested a day before the brownout.
Poultry owners have been implementing biosecurity measures, he said, because fowl diseases are easily transmitted during summer.
Eric Perez, provincial veterinarian, said his office had not yet received a report on the broilers’ death. But he instructed veterinarians from his office to closely monitor the broiler integrators, who have poultry farms in almost all of the towns and cities of the province.
“Broilers are sensitive to heat because they have no sweat glands,” Perez said, so broilers have to be housed in cages with tunnel ventilation, where a temperature lower than room temperature is maintained.
Perez said the ideal temperatures for broilers are between 20 to 24 degrees.