Water usage versus water consumption in poultry.

Water Usage = Water Consumption + Water Spillage (WU=WC+WS). Water usage is the total amount of water going into a poultry facility’s drinker lines. Once in the drinker lines, two things happen to the water. During the drinking process, a certain percentage of the water is consumed or ingested by the birds. This can be truly categorized as water consumption. At the same time, a certain percentage of this water is spilled — it is not consumed or ingested by the birds. When a bird pecks the drinker’s trigger pin, water discharges from the drinker. If the discharged water is equal to or less than the volume that can be retained in the bird’s beak, little or no water is spilled. However, if the water discharged is greater than what can be retained in the bird’s beak, this oversupply results in water spillage. So when a poultry producer measures the amount of water going through the water meter, he or she is measuring water usage — the water going into the poultry facility that includes both water consumption and water spillage. Poultry producers know that the more water birds consume the more they eat and, as a consequence, the faster and bigger the birds grow. If the producer equates water meter readings as water consumed by the birds, then he may increase watering line column pressure in order to increase water discharge from the drinkers (confirmed by meter readings) so bird weights will increase. The problem is that, unless the birds’ beaks have grown dramatically in size and can retain all the increased water discharge, all the producer really achieves is an increase in spillage, not in water consumption. In other words, water consumption (WC) has likely remained the same, but water spillage (WS) and water usage (WU) have increased. see