Sustainability in breeding programmes: breeding the long-life layer

Very nice article

Very interesting article . Fewer hens needed to produce same number of eggs. Feed qty per egg produced will be less for birds with longer life span. Similarly cost per day old chick placed per egg would also reduce. Both feed and day old pullets specially breeder pullets are expensive factors for breeder farmer. Rearing cost too is becoming high due to higher expenses on biosecurity, vaccinations and feed cost. It becomes less demanding if the bird life cycle is extended to 100 weeks. Compared to present 70 weeks. Robustness will be automatically improved in this selection program. This is specially interesting for operations with open sided cage based production in commcial layers, layer and broiler breeders. Annual genetic gain may drop a bit but now most of the strains have already reached a plateu of production potential. More commercial gains will be possible by improving robustness traits.

My comments above are all with respect to commercial layers only. Perspectives are different for layer breeders and broiler breeders.

1. Sustainability is the key to a better future. 2. Humans rely on natural resources for business, activities, and survival. 3. Ignoring sustainability can lead to the exhaustion of natural resources. 4. Sustainability is important to study even if you aren't an environmental science major. Challenges for sustainability. 5. We can break these down into three main challenges–instability, implementation, governance. 6. Increasing global instability, including the recent financial crisis, the political turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, and the problems caused by changing climate conditions has brought about growing insecurity. Dr V.Rajendra Prasad