Broiler Breeder Management Is No Easy Task

The correlation between egg weight and hatchability is curviliniar. Small eggs ( below 52gms) with thick shells have higher percentage of late deads and lower hatch. Eggs above 70gms have thinner shells, suffer from higher % of weight loss and lower hatches. The chick weight is generally 2/3rds of egg weight. Chicks loose weight on holding and long distance travel. The minimum weight of eggs for hatching depends on the rearing condition of broiler chicks. It is not good to mix up chicks of young breeders with those of older breeders. The smaller chicks suffer. Integrators who have larger size breeder flocks and rear chicks on their own farms set eggs of even 48 gms. The chicks weighing 30 to 32gms also can be successfully reared if transfered to the brooder house quickly and fed early. This is possible with integrators.The depletion will be marginally higher and the growth is slightly delayed. The 40days weight of broiler is about 7gms less for every 1gm of chick weight. . When day old chicks are sold to customers and invole long distance travel, smaller chicks suffer more dehydration resulting in chick mortality, poor 1st week weight, variation in weight, bad immune response and poor FCR. For chick selling, setting of eggs below 53 gms and chicks below 35gms can spoil the reputation of the hatchery. Setting eggs above 55gms and quick dispatches is recommended. 60gms eggs and 40gms chicks produce the best results.

It is also common practice to set small sized eggs separately from bigger eggs. However, if the number is not enough to fill a setter, still some people use to mark the setter trays with smaller eggs so later they shall be treated separately. Indeed, if you are selling DOC to customer, mostly they will not accept chicks less than 40gm of body weight

Uniformity in day-old chicks is increasingly important as a contributor to economic efficiency. Producing chicks of a uniform size requires two basic conditions: an optimised incubation process, which depends on the quality of the incubators and the incubation programmes – and uniformly sized hatching eggs, which relies upon many factors linked to the breeder farm. Breed, the age of the hen, the hen’s body size, feeding, diseases and the farm environment are all key factors.

Fully agree with Mr. Robert Huggins. Often, the Hatchery does not provide the information on the Weight of the DOC to the farmers and the latter do not know whether he has to separate the chicks in two pens.

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