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Poultry welfare
Proper animal welfare involves providing the proper housing, management, nutrition, disease prevention and treatment, responsible care, humane handling and, when necessary, humane euthanasia. These factors allow for the most optimal and humane growing environment. The concept of animal welfare includes three elements: the bird’s normal biological functioning, its emotional state and its ability to express its natural behaviors. Improving animal welfare can be accomplished through offerings like poultry feed enrichment, which can reduce stress, thereby increasing performance, productivity and profitability. Animal welfare is currently a major requirement for intensive poultry production. Beak trimming, stocking density, free access to feed, heat stress, and air pollutants became important issues, which are regulated in several countries. Animal welfare is observed by watching how birds naturally behave and even by looking at mortality stemming from aggressive behaviors.
Broiler welfare assurance programs specify the standards that producers must follow to sell their broilers, receive a premium, and/or a certification label on their products. Broiler assurance programs differ in the guidelines and audit standards that producers must follow because the missions and goals of each organization...
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Identifying individual birds that are suffering or that have compromised health and welfare is key to maintaining high standards of poultry care. Knowing your birds and when they are ill or in pain is imperative for identifying birds that need treatment or that might need to be euthanized....
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Turkeys are an important American cultural icon and Thanksgiving dinner staple. In fact, it is tradition for the US president to “pardon” a turkey each year at an annual White House ceremony. The 2021 turkeys that participated in the ceremony were from Indiana. ...
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Compromised leg health is a welfare and economic concern for meat chickens. Enrichment of the production environment via the provision of perches has been a focal point of research into reducing the prevalence of leg disorders in recent years. Despite inconsistent evidence of the effect of perches (Groves and Muir 2013; Phibbs et al. 2019), they are provided in almost two thirds of the Australian meat chicken industry, with 2.7 m perch/1000 birds required under the RSPCA Approved Farming...
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Effects of <i>Ganoderma lucidum</i> fermentative products supplementation on growth performances, carcass characteristics and immune response in Native Chickens
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by Sam Shafer
Higher stocking density linked to lower body weight and weight gain, but is total antioxidant capacity the culprit?
Poultry scientists have found that a goose’s performance is closely tied to their housing conditions. But while there are several studies linking high stocking density to health problems in geese, research is lacking when it comes to the actual physiological drivers behind...
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Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been used for animal behaviour and welfare research, to monitor animal location and resource utilization. The aim of this study was to develop and validate an in-house custom built ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID system to be used on a commercial free-range egg farm with three-tier aviaries. The system was designed and constructed to detect hens in certain areas (feeders, nest boxes, range) within the housing system. Briefly, Speedway R420...
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Optimizing performance in broilers with low crude protein diets
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As our 2022 rolls on, here in the Midwest, our poultry producers have already encountered a steady dose of unusually high ambient temperatures. In the month of June, temps have already consistently reached into the mid and upper 90s. These high temperature will surely continue into July and August, which puts a great deal of stress on the animals of...
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The need to reduce heat stress and oxidative stress in poultry is crucial to maintain bird performance and optimal margins for farmers. Phileo’s experts discuss how to mitigates the detrimental effects of heat stress using premium quality yeast cell walls. J...
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The Poultry Research Foundation, in conjunction with WPSA -Australian Branch, cordially invites you to the 34th Australian Poultry Science Symposium at the Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park.
The Australian Poultry Science Symposium is the premier avian science conference in Australia, attracting delegates from right across the country and around the world. This year our conference will focus on an over-arching theme of: “Global Volatility and Poultry Industry...
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Introduction Dermanyssus gallinae (de Geer, 1778), often called the poultry red mite (PRM), is highly prevalent in most parts of the world, especially in farms of laying hens (Sparagano et al., 2009; Sigognault-Flochlay et al., 2017). In uncontrolled conditions PRM populations can grow to very high numbers, commonly reaching up to 50,000 parasites per bird (Sparagano et al., 2014). Especially at night, adult PRM and nymph stages bite hens to suck blood (Sparagano et al.,...
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INTRODUCTION The Amazon rainforest is an important regulatory mechanism of the tropical atmosphere and its climate variation, performing important functions in the climate equilibrium of several ecosystems and their inhabitants. The region also has unique climate and environment characteristics (Fisch et al., 1998). The development of poultry production in the region thus presents several challenges related to birds’ environmental comfort, depending on the type of...
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Rapidly growing birds may consume up to twice as much water as feed (Scantling and Watkins 2013), which means a plentiful supply of clean water is crucial for poultry health and productivity. To determine the quality of your poultry’s water resources,...
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Introduction Poultry, due to its genetic, nutritional and managemental upgradation have become a source for quick productivity. But, skyrocketing conventional ingredients, fluctuating managemental conditions, and other quality parameters of rearing birds, farmer...
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WHAT IS HEAT STRESS? It is a combination of metabolic and environmental factors that forces animals to undergo physiological, metabolic and behavioral adaptations to maintain body temperature within normal limits and in a sustained mode. Heat stress occurs when the...
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Interovo Egg Group the latest leading poultry company to implement Evonik Porphyrio® software solutions.
Interovo Egg Group BV – one of Europe’s leading producers of eggs and egg products –...
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One of the greatest challenges to production facing poultry farmers in India is heat stress and the strain that it causes to the bird. Climatic conditions in India are such there is intense radiant energy for an extended period of time. Poultry create a large quantity of metabolic heat and accumulate additional heat from radiant energy. Heat production and accumulation, coupled with compromised cooling capability because of environmental conditions, causes heat load in the bird to increase...
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INTRODUCTION In recent years, interest in the welfare of hens has been increasing. The public and activist groups than by scientific evidence have influenced much of current European legislation on the welfare of laying hens more. These groups proposed that the European Union abolish the cage housing system by the enriched cage system (750 cm 2 of surface per bird); where the hens also have perches and nesting material (Bulmer y Gil, 2008). In this regard, in the...
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Introduction Controlling production costs and animal welfare are important factors for breeders. Feed accounts for 50 to 70% of the production cost in poultry production (van Horne, 2018). The feed conversion ratio (FCR), which is the ratio of feed consumption to meat or egg production, is an important criterion for the profitability of these farms. It is also an indicator of the environmental impact of production. For example, the reduction of 10% in FCR results in a reduction...
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This award recognizes original research on poultry welfare in any discipline that has been published in the last five years (2017-2021).
Alexandra Harlander
University of...
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