Crucial factor in chick development

First of all, if you look at the traditional situation, most chicks don’t have access to feed and water during the first 24 to 72 hours of their life. If you think about it, that’s just not ethically correct. With early feeding, you see that by preventing hunger and thirst among day-old chicks, the development of important organs – such as the intestinal tract – is not restricted. As a result, chicks will continue to grow and will develop in the best possible way, while mortality over the complete grow-out cycle decreases. This confirms that early feeding is a crucial factor in chick development.

Undisrupted development, fewer antibiotics

Early feeding particularly improves the development of the intestine. This is a great advantage for the chick’s immune system, as well as for the feed conversion ratio. Having an improved immune system directly results in less need for antibiotics.  

With early feeding, we see heavier chicks from the moment of pull until processing. We’re talking about a 12% weight increase at pull and up to 5% higher weight at processing. Poultry farmers with HatchCare chicks notice an average -3.7 point improvement in FCR on 2,300g.  

As the HatchCare chicks haven’t experienced any stress caused by hunger and thirst, they will adapt quickly to their new living environment. As a result, they will move around the poultry house more easily, which means they will be more evenly distributed. 

Maintaining uniform eggshell temperatures

Unlike solutions that rely on eggs hatching in the poultry house, HatchCare is able to supply a large number of farmers with superior day-old chicks all at the same time. In other words, HatchCare requires only the hatchery to make an investment, whereas home-hatching solutions require all poultry farmers to invest in a completely new system. HatchCare leaves the hatching process to the experts, so that farmers can focus on what they’re best at, raising chicks from day-old to processing.  

It’s far easier to control eggshell temperature in a hatcher than in a poultry house. Uniform eggshell temperature is crucial in order to achieve uniformity in embryo development, even during the last four days of incubation. For the best results, it’s essential to stay as close to a temperature of 98⁰F (± 1⁰F) as possible. It’s easier to do this in HatchCare with HatchTech’s Microclimer technology and Laminar Airflow than in a large poultry house.

'Optimal embryo and chick development'

The relevance of early feeding has long been known. The first scientific publication on this topic, a joint effort by several researchers from all over the world, dates back to 1998. Dr. Inge van Roovert and her team have been researching the effects of early feeding for almost 10 years now. “By researching weight loss in day-old chicks, we realised that, aside from providing perfectly uniform temperatures, there was even more we could do to support optimal embryo and chick development – both pre- and post-hatching,” she says. “This finding has been confirmed by external publications, as well as by our own research and HatchCare’s results from the field.”