19 Jan

Dr: Ron Meijerhof: Mother nature leads the way

Successful broiler production starts with creating optimal growth conditions from the moment of hatch. In recent years, early feeding was […]

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Dr: Ron Meijerhof: Mother nature leads the way

Animal Nutrition Ad Bal

Successful broiler production starts with creating optimal growth conditions from the moment of hatch. In recent years, early feeding was developed and was believed to be the “golden egg”. “By everything humans invent however, we must bear in mind that mother nature always has the final word”, says international poultry consultant Ron Meijerhof. “The entire day old chick management, demands more than just early feeding.”

Dr. Ron Meijerhof is well known in the international poultry business. As a consultant, he is serving and advising poultry integrations across the world, with:

parent stock,

incubation

and chick management as his specialism.

“The best practice is a good theory. In other words, developing new systems should fully be based on in depth scientific research, logical thinking and as a result on a welldocumented theory”, says Ron.

“This also holds true for early feeding”, he continues. “Early feeding is a superb condition for chicks to start their young life. Yet, we must stick to the facts. The hatch window in a commercial hatchery usually takes about 36 hours, and with processing and transport time the period between first chick hatching and finding feed and water might easily be 48 hours.

When feeding chicks already during hatching, they will on average start eating 24 hours earlier, compared to a traditional system.
In theory they should then end up by around 80 grams heavier at slaughter weight, as they grow one day longer. This is not the case however.

The entire crop ends up at the similar slaughter weight compared to if they had not had received feed and water in an early stage. If there is a difference in slaughter weight, it is relatively small”

“But then which is the real advantage of early feeding?”, Ron continues. “Why should we make this effort and invest in quite a costly system? EU legislation defines that young animals must receive their first feed within a defined number of hours or period of time.

This depends on the type of animal. Chicks are excluded from this legislation however, as they possess a yolk sac which provides nutrition for the early days of their life.

And where do they stay during these days in nature? Right, underneath mother hen! Chickens exist for millions of years already. There’s a reason for their natural behavior. They have behaved so over this long period of time and will keep doing so in the future.

That’s why in nature chicks stay underneath the wings of mother hen. There, they don’t have access to feed and water. But what they do have, is

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