Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

! Agriculture and Forestry Research, Special Issue No 362 (Braunschweig, 2012) ISSN 0376-0723
Download: www.vti.bund.de/en/startseite/vti-publications/landbauforschung-special-issues.html
Table 1. Comparision of Strains, Iber/Lugitsch 2010
Male+female Period in days Amount of feed in kg Weight in kg Weight:feed
Sulmtaler 133 10,75 2,24 1:4,80
Altsteirer 133 7,60 1,61 1:4,72
Rhodeländer 133 9,57 2,21 1:4,33
Les Bleues 97 7,00 2,34 1:2,99
JA 957 (white) 56 4,84 2,20 1:2,20
JA 457 (brown) 70 5,72 2,20 1:2,60
6 organic farms around Berlin have begun to produce these dual purpose chickens in small flocks
(200 – 1000 birds) for the regional market successfully. The concept is to build up laying hens
flocks up the amount of eggs being needed. When having enough laying hens also female birds will
be used for fattening. Both male and female birds show good results for meat.
Table 2. Survey on farms
Farm Main activity Second activity Comments
1 Laying hens Rearing male and female birds Own natural reproduction
2 Broilers Rearing female birds for farm 2 and 5
3 Laying hens
4 Laying hens Rearing male and female birds
5 Laying hens In future own reproduction
6 Laying hens Rearing male and femal birds Own strain
Results on meat
The weight, feed uptake and weight:feed ratio for the birds slaughtered in week 12 and 13 is in the
expected frame. When slaughtering in week 16 the weight:feed ratio gets worse than 1:4. There are
problems with appearance of breast blisters on some birds. The reason has not yet been found and
we cannot exclude genetic disposition. This would be quite unusaual because breast blisters have
been connected with faster growth in former research (Knierim et al., 2009) The male birds show a
good acceptance of the outdoor range.
Results on eggs
The new data that was collected by us in 2011 and 2012 is regarding the amount of eggs. In hybrid
hens the amount of eggs per year that can be reached “in theory” is between 280 and 290, but in
reality is often between 240 and 250 (sold eggs). The Les Bleues parent flock on the farm “Geflügelzucht
Hetzenecker” in Bavaria (who was the first having the idea of using the Les Bleues as a
dual purpose chicken) gets between 240 and 250 eggs per year. The main challenge is for the young
laying hens not to become too fat before the start of the egg laying period. As reduction of feed uptake
is not an option for organic farms. Instead of that these hens need to have feed with a lower
content of energy and higher content of fibre.
On the farms the amount of eggs is up to now between 180 and 240. That is not surprising because
all the the farmers are beginners in poultry production. Start of laying period is between week 20
and 22, that means later than in hybrid strains. The amount of small eggs (S size) is about 50% in
week 24. A concept of a dual purpose chicken has to include a good use for small eggs. As the colour
of egg is a bright brown the egg can be differed from normal brown eggs.
Feed uptake in the laying flocks is up to 170 grammes per day and hen. That’s a lot higher than
usual although there is a certain amount of feed waste in these small flock sizes. Solutions have to
be found to reduce feed costs.
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