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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.
Daily water consumption has been used as a management tool by poultry producers for decades. Since water consumption is closely correlated to feed consumption, decreases in daily water consumption are often an indicator of reduced feed consumption and/or health issue. With the emergence of ultrasonic water meters bird water usage can now be more accurately monitored on a minute-to-minute basis thus providing the opportunity to view bird drinking/feeding activity over the course of the day...
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Shawna Weimer (University of Arkansas and Poultry Extension Collaborative) talks about the transition to cage-free production and consumer preferences, as well as enrichments and stunning, in this interview during IPPE 2023 in Atlanta, USA....
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Bacillus licheniformis-Fermented Products Improve Growth Performance and Intestinal Gut Morphology in Broilers under Clostridium perfringens Challenges (Extract)
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Will Strickland (University of Georgia) comments on his research on water consumption and potential issues that can be prevented by monitoring it, in this interview during IPPE 2023 in Atlanta, USA....
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Steve Lerner (CHR. Hansen) explains the effects of probiotics on the well-being of birds, and also comments on welfare and sustainability, in this interview during IPPE 2023 in Atlanta, USA....
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On-farm euthanasia is not a pleasant topic, but when raising poultry, there are often circumstances that require birds to be euthanized, such as illness, injury and disease, because it is not always possible or feasible to treat affected birds. Euthanasia refers to “good death” and is distinct from other terms such...
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As discussed in our previous newsletter, circumstances arise that require poultry to be humanely euthanized. This newsletter provides a brief overview on-farm methods for the euthanasia of small numbers of poultry. Most of these methods are different from methods used at processing and methods used for culling or depopulation during disease...
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What is Stunning? How is it Regulated? Stunning is the process of rendering broilers unconscious or insensible before slaughter and various mechanisms may be used in facilities to achieve insensibility (Humane Slaughter Association, 2015). The methods used depend on the facility's location (on-farm vs. in a...
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During July 18th - 22nd our Research & Development team participated in the 6th Viruses of Microbes conference, which took place in Guimarães, Portugal. Our colleague Agnieszka Ciesielska presented the results of one of...
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INTRODUCTION Water is the primary fluid necessary for human life. About 60% of the human body composition is water and life would not be possible without it (Chaplin, 2001). Not only is water important for the optimal functioning of the human body, but also it is the most important nutrient in the diet of some animals and the development of plants. A significant percentage of the water in the world is used in agriculture practices. In the United States, 80% of the national water...
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The parents of broilers are defined as broiler breeders. In contemporary poultry industry practices, there are many selection criteria for broiler breeders. Beyond selecting for future broilers, maximizing broiler breeder characteristics (i.e. reproductive success) is also important. In essence, we are not only selecting for...
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Dan Wood (Potters Poultry) explains the success he's found in promoting poultry through social media in this interview with PSA. Let's Squawk About It is a monthly interview segment by the Poultry Science Association....
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Allowing poultry access to vegetated, woody spaces will benefit poultry welfare. One system that incorporates the production of vegetation and livestock, including poultry, is called a silvopasture system. Woody vegetation can provide a source of income for producers while providing preferred habitat for chickens. Silvopasture...
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For many years reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in biological systems has been considered to be detrimental. However, a pleasant face of ROS has received recently tremendous attention. Indeed, it has been proven that ROS participate in cell signalling, transcription factors regulation and vitagene activation to maintain optimal cellular redox balance and to provide an effective stress adaptation [1]. In fact, redox biology is a very rapidly developing area of modern biological...
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1. Introduction The occurrence of ‘wet litter’ in meat chicken sheds is associated with concerns regarding animal welfare, flock health, food safety, environmental impacts and reductions in production efficiency. Mitigating wet litter will only be achieved when there is thorough understanding of the multidimensional causal factors. This will require a multidisciplinary approach to understand the hydrology in the meat chicken shed micro-environment; the biological...
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Laying hens are female chickens raised for egg production. The egg production system in the US is currently undergoing a transition from conventional cages to cage-free housing systems. The number of cage-free housing has increased from 4% hens in 2004 to 28% at the end of 2020 (USDA-NASS, 2021). Cage-free systems provide space...
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by Sam Shafer
Poultry scientists find hens prefer lower UVA/B light
A new Poultry Science ® study suggests hens do like sunlight—just not too much. In fact, by monitoring hen behavior under different strengths of UVA and UVB light, the researchers found that hens prefer to spend more time in lower levels...
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A highly pathogenic strain of Avian Influenza (sometimes called bird flu) is currently spreading across the United States. The virus has been detected in six States since January 2022 (see Figure 1). Avian influenza: about the...
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by Sam Shafer
Farms can take three specific steps to prevent infections in broilers
In the battle between biosecurity and disease, which safety measures have the best track records at preventing infections from spreading?
For a new study, a team of poultry scientists in Germany compared biosecurity measures on farms with the incidence of cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection that can make broiler carcasses unfit for...
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Bacillus licheniformis-Fermented Products Improve Growth Performance and Intestinal Gut Morphology in Broilers under Clostridium perfringens Challenges (Extract)
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Hypothesis Guanidinoacetic acid (GAA) is synthesized in the liver and kidneys from arginine (Arg) and glycine (Gly) and subsequently methylated by S-adenosylmethione to creatine (2). Heat-stressed birds respond to the presence of higher uric acid concentration and changes in electrolyte balance by increasing the usage of osmoprotectants. These osmolytes are viable endogenous precursors for Gly (3). On the other hand, high supplemental lysine level on modern genetic broiler...
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