Effects of initial body weight and litter material on broiler production

Abstract

This experiment was carried out in a 104 m² poultry house located between the geographical coordinates 25°45'00" south latitude and 53°03'25" west longitude and an average altitude of 550 m, from September to November, 2008. The chickens were placed in 12 pens measuring 2 m² each at a stocking density of 12 chickens m-2. This study aimed at evaluating the effect of two different initial weights (chick weight on first day of experiment) and two types of litter material on broiler production parameters, litter humidity, as well as on breast and footpad lesions. A total of 240 female Cobb® chickens, derived from the same flock of breeders, was distributed in a completely randomized experimental design with a 2 (initial weight) by 2 (litter material) factorial arrangement with three replicates per treatment. Initial weights were classified as light (34.40 - 35.22 g) or heavy (39.29 - 41.30 g), whereas wood shavings and sawdust were used as litter material. Data were analyzed by ANOVA and means were compared by Tukey's test at 95% confidence level. Initial weight significantly influenced bird performance, as chickens with heavy initial weight presented higher feed intake and body weight. Type of litter did not have any effect on breast injuries and litter humidity. However, the wood shavings litter significantly influenced footpad lesions

Behavior of broiler chickens in four different substrates: a choice test

“…In poultry production, attempts have been made to use and test several types of material for litter: refined gypsum (Wyatt & Goodman, 1992;Grimes et al, 2006), recycled paper chips from waste newspapers (Lien et al, 1992), pelletized newspaper (Frame et al, 2002;Grimes et al, 2006), tree core-like kenaf core (Malone et al, 1990;Brake et al, 1993), particleboard residues (Hester et al, 1997), leaves (Willis et al, 1997), sand (Bilgili et al, 1999;Arnould et al, 2004), cotton waste (Grimes et al, 2006), hazelnut husks or wheat stalks (Sarica & Cam, 2000), wood shavings (Shields et al, 2005;Macklin et al, 2005), rice hulls (Swain & Sundaram, 2000;Shields et al, 2004), rice hull ashes (Chamblee et al, 2003), coffee husk (Ortiz et al, 2003;Ortiz et al, 2006), saw dust (Mendes et al, 2011), coir dust (Swain & Sundaram, 2000), straw (Al Homidan & Robertson,2003), feathers (Sanotra et al, 1995;Gunnarson et al, 2000), sugarcane bagasse or peat (Petherick & Duncan, 1989). The use of any of these substrates most often depends on the availability in each area and at each moment.…”

“…Moreover, the characteristics of the materials used as broiler substrate must be taken into account, because some substrates may enrich the environment and support important behaviors of the birds (Gunnarson et al, 2000), as well as determine chickens' skin condition (Mendes et al, 2011). Thus, providing a good litter would be an effective way to increase broiler activity (Shields et al, 2005) and to reduce locomotion problems .…”

Poultry litter of wood shavings and/or sugarcane bagasse: animal performance and bed quality

“…Similar findings were reported by Atêncio et al . (2010), Mendes et al . (2011), andToghyani et al .…”

“…It is possible that the lower moisture retention capacity of wood shavings and SB litters in the fifth flock produced lower temperature and relative humidity, thus increasing bird comfort and performance. Studies investigating the use of alternatives to wood shavings in bedding have reported that use of SB (Monira et al ., 2003;Araújo et al ., 2007) and other materials (Atêncio et al ., 2010;Mendes et al ., 2011) produced no differences in productive performance of birds. Survival rate of birds was also not influenced.…”

Evaluación del comportamiento productivo de pollos Cobb 500 sometidos a restricción alimenticia como estrategia sostenible de control nutricional

“…Resultados similares fueron obtenidos por Sugeta et al (13); Morais et al (16) y Urdaneta-Rincón y Leeson, (43), razón por la cual la estrategia de supresión alimenticia aplicada en el presente estudio no ejerció ningún efecto negativo sobre la ganancia de peso, lo que sugiere una compensación favorable del crecimiento. En cuanto al CA, este fue ligeramente superior en los animales alimentados ad libitum, registrándose un valor promedio total de 4181.01 ± 306.46 g entre tratamientos, muy similar al calculado por Henn et al (37); Mendes et al (44), e InfanteRodríguez et al (45). Sahraei (12) afirma que la tasa de crecimiento está relacionada con el CA, por lo que la restricción alimenticia podría inhibir considerablemente la GTP; sin embargo, el análisis estadístico arrojó que el CA registrado en el T 3 y T 4 , fue significativamente menor (p < 0.05) con respecto al grupo control, en tal sentido, los criterios prácticos de análisis productivo empleados actualmente por los avicultores, sugieren que el valor calculado de CA en el T 4, probablemente ejerce un impacto económico significativo, considerando que la alimentación constituye el costo variable más alto (46).…”