HEAL ▶▶▶TH
suffering injurious feather pecking saw output reduce by 5%, although Mr Jones said this was an area significantly affected by lack of data. Injurious feather pecking also had a significant economic im- pact on FCR – down 25% – with birds moving and eating less. Coccidiosis and clostridiosis led to a 15% slump. Certain costs were excluded either due to lack of data or for other reasons, such as increased carcass disposal, veterinary medicine and labour costs. Mr Jones said he was deeply sur- prised by the lack of financial figures available to the industry given that it was clear people understood the economic importance of production diseases across the industry. The study is to be published in the Journal of Animal Production Science.
Part of the ProHealth project determined the cost of common diseases to farmers.
Production diseases in broiler chickens – challenges over the next five years
Poor floor quality and a failure to stop visitors from entering poultry units are two areas where broiler farmers are failing to embrace high biosecurity standards. Figures from a pan-European study found nearly half of floors investi- gated were cracked, leading to higher mortality rates. And too many farms have very little biosecurity preventing people from coming on farm and entering poultry buildings. Seven EU countries – Spain, UK, Belgium, Finland, Poland, Greece and Cyprus – participated in the ProHealth research project, which looked at both external and internal farm biosecurity issues.
In or out External categories included purchase of day old chicks, depopulation, feed and water, dead birds, used litter, farm entrance, infrastructure and farm location, while internal categories involved disease manage- ment, cleaning and disinfection and movement between houses. A total of 358 broiler farms took part in a specific questionnaire, which looked at housing, feed and water supply, treatment of disease and production management. Of these farms, 77% produced only broilers, 78.5% were part of a quality assurance scheme and 51.8% were part of an integration system. Standard parameters were used looking at average age and weight, first week and overall mortality, dead on arrival at slaughterhouse rates, condemnation rates at abattoirs and feed conversion rates.
Culture Tommy van Limbergen, project lead researcher at the University of Ghent, said the results showed a wide difference between external biosecurity cultures across Europe but a better understanding of in- ternal biosecurity requirements, marred only slightly by movements on farm between units due to the often multiple number of poultry houses.
8 ▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 1, 2019
Dr van Limbergen said disease management practices received the highest biosecurity score of 87.9% while entrance of visitors and per- sonnel was the weakest area, with a score of just over 55%. “We need to understand that the study took place during avian influ- enza outbreaks in Europe. This is an area that is easy to change – a gate, a chain,” he said. Turning to risk factor analysis, he said there was a close correlation be- tween biosecurity issues relating to first week mortality and overall mortality, particularly in relation to low floor quality and neo-natal E. coli infection. There was also some evidence suggesting that broilers housed with tunnel or roof ventilation had higher mortality in the first week.
Catching Birds that were caught in houses with red lights had a higher dead on arrival rate compared to those housed in blue or dimmed lighting. And more higher daily growth rate birds died in transport, as they seemed more susceptible to stress, especially during the summer with its hotter temperatures. Influences for higher condemnation rates at abattoirs included birds that had higher daily growth rates, shorter feed withdrawal times, no re-circular vents, had fallen foul of E. coli or had come from larger stocked houses. Producers who changed the lighting intensity during the production cycle saw better FCR rates, while necrotic enteritis problems led to a higher FCR. The study also looked at factors influencing the European Production Index (EPI), where the best broiler farms are scoring 420 out of 430. Producers stocking male birds only fared well, as did farmers who checked water and feed systems daily. Producers where flocks had suffered Dysbacteriosis – inflammation of the small intestine linked to wet litter – had a lower EPI.
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