Alig Benjamin N, Ferket Peter R, Malheiros Ramon D, Anderson Kenneth E
Prestage Department of Poultry Science, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA.
Animals (Basel). 2023 Feb 16;13(4):694. doi: 10.3390/ani13040694.
Consumer demand for retail cage-free eggs is driving the layer industry towards greater use of extensive housing environments. However, there is limited research on how these environments affect egg production characteristics of brown egg layers, as was the focus of this study. Five housing environments were evaluated under typical industry conditions, including conventional cages, enrichable colony cages, enriched colony cages, cage-free and free-range. Three different brown egg laying strains were housed in the different housing environments and managed according to standard husbandry practices and stocking densities. Data collection for the strains began at 17 weeks of age, with a base period of 28 days for feed weigh backs and egg quality assessments. Housing environment had a highly significant ( < 0.0001) effect on all egg production characteristics measured, including egg production rates (% hen-day and % hen-housed), feed consumption (g/bird/day), feed conversion (egg g/feed g), and mortality rate (%) as well as percent grade A, B, and loss. Previous research revealed better egg production metrics for white egg layers in caged environments than extensive environments. In contrast, we observed brown egg layers had optimum production results for the free-range housing environments, and the poorest performance in enrichable colony cages.
消费者对零售散养鸡蛋的需求正推动蛋鸡养殖业更多地采用粗放式养殖环境。然而，关于这些环境如何影响褐壳蛋鸡的产蛋特性的研究有限，本研究正是聚焦于此。在典型的行业条件下评估了五种养殖环境，包括传统鸡笼、可富集群体鸡笼、富集群体鸡笼、散养和自由放养。将三种不同的褐壳蛋鸡品种饲养在不同的养殖环境中，并按照标准饲养管理方法和饲养密度进行管理。对这些品种的数据收集从17周龄开始，饲料回称和蛋品质评估的基础期为28天。养殖环境对所测量的所有产蛋特性均有极显著影响（<0.0001），这些特性包括产蛋率（母鸡日产蛋率和母鸡存栏产蛋率）、采食量（克/只/天）、饲料转化率（蛋重/饲料重）、死亡率（%）以及A级、B级和破损蛋的百分比。先前的研究表明，笼养环境中的白壳蛋鸡产蛋指标优于粗放式养殖环境。相比之下，我们观察到褐壳蛋鸡在自由放养环境中生产效果最佳，而在可富集群体鸡笼中的表现最差。
