The house with Hubbard JA57 and JA87 parent stock. The dwarf females resem- ble a regular lay- er, says Melvin Hazeleger.
in Hazeleger’s first flock the number of hatching eggs per housed hen was 217, with 192.4 chicks hatched.
poultry house is suboptimal, Hazeleger concludes. Given the number of nests, there are too many hens. With this second flock he decided to place 2,000 fewer hens. This means that the stocking density per square metre was reduced from 7.7 to 6.8 females. “Laying nest occupancy is an important factor. Compared to regular parent stock, darf hens actually require more nests,” Hazeleger explains. He notices that this measure helped against floored eggs. “The rate has now reduced to 4 instead of 8 percent.”
Extra heating costs The reduced stocking density may have a positive effect on the number of floor eggs, but it also leads to a lower temper- ature in the poultry house. The darf females reach an average weight of 2.2 kilogrammes, which is about half the weight of normal breeders. “Dwarf hens produce much less warmth which is noticeable with the reduced density,” Hazeleger ex- plains. He cannot do without heaters in the two older poultry houses at the farm. “Extra heating is unusual in the breeding sector but it is often necessary with dwarf hens in older hous- es.” Extra heating is not necessary in the large and modern poultry house which has ceiling ventilation. “That poultry house is well insulated. That cuts the cost by half”. The height of the ledge from the ground to the slats is an im- portant focus point with darf parent females, Hazeleger notes. Before the start of the first flock, he lowered the ledge
Farm employee Martin Bloemendal picking up floor eggs
from 55 to 35 centimetres. During the flock he can easily raise the ledge again by 10 centimetres. This is necessary to re- move all the manure underneath the slats. “We have no pits underneath the slats. For the older hens 45 centimetres poses no problem”.
Feed and light The lights at the Puurveen Kip company are switched on at 05:00 hours and remain on for 14 hours. “During the first two weeks we are still somewhat careful with light and feed,” Hazel- eger explains. “We don’t want the hens to start producing too early, given the weight of the eggs”. Hazeleger feeds the darf females as much as they need during the course of the flock, unlike regular parent stock. He works with chain feeding in the two older poultry houses. The dwarf hens there are fed 4 to 5 times a day. “We use the Bridomat feed system in the largest poultry house where the birds are fed 7 to 9 times a day”. Hazeleger has quite a few males. He normally starts with 10%, some of them are put in the quarantine house immedi- ately to spike the flock later. The quarantine house has room for 300 males. During the first flock Hazeleger did not need to add many males. It has been a different story altogether with the second flock. “The males’ leg quality is not great. I see torn heel tendons and I had to add several extra males to the flock. So it’s never a dull moment managing a breeding flock, which is what makes it such an interesting job to me.”
▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 5, 2020 15
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