WELF ▶▶▶ARE
Moving away from skip-day feeding in broiler breeders
BY TREENA HEIN T
o meet consumer demand and ensure profitability for broiler producers, the breeding of broilers global- ly over the years has resulted in birds that grow quickly and are very lean. The broiler breeder hens
(BBH) that produce broiler chicks also have these same charac- teristics that must be carefully managed. In short, this means that they must be fed so that they do not grow too quickly or store too much fat. While some fat deposition is certainly nec- essary for egg production, too much fat deposited around the ovaries lowers the number of eggs produced per BBH. The feeding strategy used in North America and other parts of the world to control growth rate and excessive fat deposi- tion, resulting in birds that reach a set weight and produce a given number of eggs, is skip-day feeding, i.e. feeding every 48 hours. However, this comes with welfare concerns (and in- deed, skip-day feeding is banned in some European coun- tries) but, says Dr Martin Zuidhof, it is also not the best production strategy to use today from a profit standpoint.
Not the best way “We here in North America should be moving away from skip-day because it’s severe, but also because it’s not the best way to operate a broiler breeder farm with today’s genetics,” explains Zuidhof, professor of Poultry Systems Modeling and Precision Feeding at the University of Alberta in Canada. “Our research shows that it’s more beneficial economically to raise BBH to a higher weight – and yes, you can achieve this by feeding a bigger meal every 48 hours but that’s a long time between meals – and you can also get there by feeding every day. And you get a different metabolic effect that provides outstanding performance.” Skip-day feeding, he says, results in some of the feed going into fat storage but he and his colleagues have found that “when you feed every day, all the feed goes into running the body and producing eggs. So you get increased egg produc- tion – but we found that you get better performance of the broiler chicks as well”. Building on a 2018 study called
▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 7, 2021
Skip-day feeding is still used today in North America and is allowed in the EU. However, daily feeding to a higher weight provides not just welfare benefits but economic benefits as well.
‘ Lifetime productivity of conventionally and precision-fed broiler breeders’, Zuidhof discovered that hens fed to a heavi- er weight produce broiler offspring that at 42 days have a 5% increase in body weight compared to conventionally-raised broilers. The genetic potential for 145 chicks/BBH also shows there is room for improvement over the current rate of 115 (average in Alberta). He plans to more fully examine the im- pact of maternal body weight on reproductive efficiency and offspring performance, and notes that Aviagen is interested in this research.
Economic returns In addition, his PhD student Mohammad Afrouziyeh has shown that feeding every day provides economic returns through reduced aggression. With skip-day feeding, birds are
Martin Zuidhof and Mohammad Afrouziyeh (l) took a deep dive into broiler breeder feeding strategies.
31
PHOTOS: UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36
