Use of colony systems can raise productivity and help to solve welfare concerns

Study: Broiler growing in colony systems – performance and welfare

07/05/2014

Inside view of an AviMax aisle with it’s innovative, energy-saving lighting system: BigLED is the world’s first full-spectrum lighting system for cage-based broiler growing. An increased share of the blue and red light spectrum, which are not within the visible range of humans, make for less stress, a lower mortality rate and a higher growth rate.
Big Dutchman Colony-System AviMax 160 sliding
Broiler house with four rows AviMax and cross ventilation
Overview for foot pad dermatitis scores
Healthy feet, healthy bird
The birds were ahead by two days compared with the liveweight development standardized by Aviagen.

The demand for broiler colony systems has been increasing around the globe for the past ten years. Despite the popularity of these systems, there has been a lack of scientifically reliable data – until recently: In its April edition, the renowned journal Poultry International reported that Big Dutchman carried out an empirical study in cooperation with the University of Goettingen (Germany) to examine the performance of broilers kept in the Avimax colony system.

Conclusion: The performance of broilers is considered clearly above average. Important factors such as daily weight gains of 64 grams and a feed conversion of 1:1.57 underline the economic advantages of management systems without litter. In addition, mortality as well as foot pad infections were at a very low level. This leads to reduced doses of medicines and affords higher levels of animal welfare, despite the limited space for movement.