Currently, the practice which takes many forms – from adding starter feed and water lines into hatchers, to placing gels in chick baskets to hatching chicks in the litter on the farm – is rare in the U.S. Specialty producer Farmers Pride Inc., better known as Bell & Evans, and has done it since 2017. In Europe, the practice is more common with major operations in Holland, Belgium and Germany offering food and water upon hatch.
However, the domestic integrated broiler industry is much different. European market conditions and regulations are powerful motivators toward early feeding. In the Netherlands, hatcheries will be required to provide feed and water by 2024.
In the U.S., integrators already placing birds quickly after hatch must decide whether a performance benefit would provide enough return on investment to justify the substantial costs of changing. There is also the question of what early feeding looks like in a commercial operation. Integrators, and potentially growers themselves, would be incurring major expenses by retrofitting or rebuilding existing hatcheries and farms.
The benefits of early feeding
Current research shows growing evidence of the importance of immediate access to feed and water. Studies show early feeding can help establish a better physiology and microbiome in chicks, grow chicks sooner and lead to greater yield in the processing plant.
Chicks do not all hatch at the same time, so many hours may pass for the first chicks before leaving the hatcher. In the field, the time between hatch and placement can be lengthy. The chick is born with a yolk sac which provides early nutrition, but the hours after the bird’s hatch is critical to health at slaughter.
E. David Peebles, a professor at Mississippi State University’s Department of Poultry Science, said if the bird is not fed, then it will potentially draw upon its own body’s protein reserves for nutrition, leading to immediate muscle loss and a compromised physiology. To the contrary, immediate access to chicks will enhance growth early and later in life by aiding in the development of the neonatal body.
Peebles said the length of time the bird goes without eating and drinking is crucial. Studies show there is a direct correlation between the number of hours a chick goes without eating and its carcass yield at 49 days.
Dr. Peter Ferket, the associate head of the Prestage Department of Poultry Science at North Carolina State University, said the correlation in the perinatal period is due to the bird’s body and intestinal tract expanding rapidly and experiencing growth on a cellular level that will never be replicated during its life. When chicks eat earlier, they see benefits for bone integrity, immune function, intestinal strength and potential for greater meat yield. He believes this is especially true with modern broiler genetics.
European hatching consultant Dr. Ron Meijerhof, managing director of Poultry Performance Plus, said bird stress can be lowered when chicks hatch on a farm with less density, dust, carbon dioxide and cross contamination.
Antibiotic free
Immediate access to feed and water can be a plus for the avian immune system and grow in importance as the use of antibiotics continues to shrink in the U.S.
Ferket said early feeding enhances the bird’s ability to fight its own battle against pathogens in the field. When chicks are fed early, the poultry microbiome is better developed and geared toward lifelong health. Moreover, nutritionists can use certain ingredients in starter feeds to increase intestinal health and block the establishment of pathogenic microbes in the gut.
The tradeoff
Shifting to early feeding in the U.S. would be no small feat. Integrators would be dealing with potentially millions of dollars in start-up expenses and would need to decide what form of the practice would be right for them.
Meijerhoff said in Europe, early feeding is split evenly between hatching on farm and providing feed and water in the hatchery. Changing the hatchery is expensive as it requires larger hatchers and more automation in the hatchery. Hatching on farm requires little additional equipment but requires the delivery of eggs rather than chicks. Plus, some productivity is lost because the house is full of eggs rather than birds for some time during each growout cycle.
Ferket said the integrator in the U.S. is focused on meat production, so hatchery investments are comparatively low priority capital expenditure. U.S. producers would need to double the size of their hatcheries to feed and water in the hatchery. Supply chains could be challenged to constantly provide specialized feed to the hatchery and the farms, too.
Still, many question whether the yolk provides all the nutrition a chick needs. Meijerhof said there is no proven benefit in technical performance, other than when feeding starts earlier and the birds have a longer period to eat. He said the benefit is to the “image and marketing opportunities.”
The integrator’s perspective
David Wicker, vice president of live operations at Fieldale Farms, said the key issue facing integrators is how much time they have between the hatch and placement on the farm. His operation is organized, so birds are on feed and water within three hours of pull. However, 80-90% of the chicks are hatched in eight to 10 hours and the remainder of the chicks are hatched in 10 to 12 hours. The chicks with a longer hatch time could benefit from earlier feeding.
For an integrator with a chick delivery period exceeding 24 hours, making the investment on early feeding is an easy choice. Wicker said the benefits of an early feeding program are much smaller for an integrator with a well-run hatchery and quick chick delivery times.
He understands that science says early feeding is influential to the gut microbiota. Ideally, integrators would want to formulate a highly digestible feed with probiotics to help establish the optimum microbiome during the bird's early life.
The major question is: Do those few hours between the hatch and the farm create enough profit to cover the cost of the investment?
“What benefit is that nine to 10 hours to a commercial operation in the U.S.? I don’t think anyone knows that answer yet,” Wicker said.
Also, if an early feeding program does create a substantial benefit for one group of birds, then the integrator would be required to draw up new contracts for growers with the early fed birds due to the advantages they possess over a standard bird.
Return on investment
Nevertheless, Wicker said the idea is interesting and continues to be seriously investigated in the industry. Removal of antibiotics from poultry production and the possibility to use the microbiome are influential. Establishing a strong microbiome and controlling the level of bacterial contamination in processing plants would have serious advantages. But the data to make a decision does not yet exist.
Both Ferket and Peebles say the performance gains are worth the cost of upgrades and believe the investment would pay for itself over time. Ferket said the integrators should consider early feeding as an investment in risk management. It will be the most helpful to the weakest chicks and likely reduce overall mortality.
Animal welfare
In Europe, Meijerhof said, the push toward early feeding came from an animal welfare perspective. The 2024 requirement in the Netherlands comes from a court decision stemming from a legal challenge posed by an animal activist group. He said the European industry, particularly in the Netherlands and Germany, is stuck with early feeding. Peebles said it will be some time, but if it’s happening in the Netherlands then it could happen in the U.S.
Animal welfare could be a key factor in the U.S., too. The Global Animal Partnership (GAP), a third-party welfare standards organization linked to Whole Foods, calls for chickens to spend their entire life on the farm from egg to slaughter in their highest tier of animal welfare certification. Bell & Evans is a partner of GAP.
In 2020, Perdue Foods, also a GAP partner, said they were testing on-farm hatching at a research farm. Their trial removes a ready-to-hatch egg and places it in a specially designed hatcher letting it hatch onto litter with access to a drinker and feed pan. At the time, Dr. Bruce Stewart-Brown, the company's senior vice president of food safety, quality and live operations, said the trials would continue and there is an opportunity for it in the future.
What challenges are faced by today’s hatching chicks? www.WATTPoultry.com/articles/42075
