Key points of restricted feeding of breeder chickens and skills of restricted feeding of breeder chickens

Breeder chickens have a strong feeding ability, so they grow and develop rapidly and gain weight quickly, but if they are not controlled, the weight of breeder chickens is easy to exceed the standard, thus affecting the production. Therefore, restricted feeding must be carried out between 4 weeks of age and 24 weeks of age. The specific techniques are as follows:

(the picture comes from the Internet)

First of all, restricted feeding can ensure that the body weight of breeder chickens meets the standard of this breed. Breeder chickens are overweight, especially hens are overweight, the egg production will be greatly reduced, and the qualified rate of breeding eggs will also be reduced. And being overweight often leads to leg problems.

Restricted feeding can fully develop the bones and internal organs of broilers in the early stage, maintain a proper body weight, postpone the period of sexual maturity and synchronize their sexual maturity and body maturity. After 27 weeks of age, the laying rate of breeder chickens can exceed 50% and enter the peak laying period at the age of 30 weeks. Therefore, by using restricted feeding, the first laying age of breeder chickens is neat, the laying rate increases rapidly, the egg laying peak lasts for a long time, and the qualified rate of breeding eggs is high.

Limiting feeding can reduce the amount of dietary input and feed consumption. At the same time, it can reduce the amount of abdominal fat deposition in breeder chickens, so as to reduce the incidence of prolapse of anus and dystocia.

In production, how to master the method of restricting feeding? At present, the methods of restricted feeding can be divided into time-limited method, quality-limited method and limited method and so on. In practice, a certain method is not used alone. For example, the time-limited method mainly controls the feed intake of breeder chickens by controlling their feeding time. This method can be divided into three forms: daily feed restriction, alternate day feed restriction and weekly feed restriction.

(the picture comes from the Internet)

Daily feed restriction is based on the age, body weight growth and nutritional needs of breeder chickens to maintain growth and development, daily feed restriction or by limiting the number of feeding times and the time of each feeding. The advantage of daily feed restriction is that it has less stress on chickens, which is suitable for the later stage of brooding, the early stage of breeding and one week before being transferred to the laying house.

On the other hand, the feed restriction for two days is concentrated on the feed for one day, that is, feeding for one day and stopping for one day. This method is more stressful to breeder chickens, but it can alleviate the phenomenon of competing for food, so that each chicken can eat roughly the same amount of food, so as to obtain chickens with high body weight uniformity and meet the target requirements. This method is suitable for chickens whose growth rate is fast and difficult to control.

The weekly feed restriction is 5 days and 2 days a week, that is, the feed of 7 days is distributed to 5 days of feeding. This method is not used very much.

The main purpose of the quality restriction method is to limit the nutritional level of feed so that the content of some nutrients in the diet of breeder chickens is lower than the normal level. Methods are usually used to reduce dietary nutrient elements, such as energy, protein and lysine. It is worth noting that vitamins, minerals and trace elements can not be reduced at will, but still need to meet the supply.