Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A full-scale breeding program was commenced in 1958, with commercial shipments in Canada and the US in 1959 and in Europe in 1963. [7] As a second example, color sexing broilers was proposed by Shaver in 1973. The genetics were based on the company's breeding plan for egg layers, which had been developed in the mid-1960s.
Broiler breeder farms raise parent stock which produce fertilized eggs. A broiler hatching egg is never sold at stores and is not meant for human consumption. [9] The males and females are separate genetic lines or breeds, so that each line can be selected for optimal traits for productivity in either females or males, rather than a single line in which a compromise is reached between female ...
In poultry-keeping, "free range" is widely confused with yarding, which means keeping poultry in fenced yards. Yarding, as well as floorless portable chicken pens (" chicken tractors ") may have some of the benefits of free-range livestock but, in reality, the methods have little in common with the free-range method.
Poultry farming is the form of animal husbandry which raises domesticated birds such as chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese to produce meat or eggs for food. Poultry – mostly chickens – are farmed in great numbers. More than 60 billion chickens are killed for consumption annually.
Selective breeding has been responsible for large increases in productivity. For example, in 2007, a typical broiler chicken at eight weeks old was 4.8 times as heavy as a bird of similar age in 1957, [36] while in the thirty years to 2007, the average milk yield of a dairy cow in the United States nearly doubled. [36]
Poultry can also be kept in a barn system, with no access to the open air, but with the ability to move around freely inside the building. The most intensive system for egg-laying chickens is battery cages, often set in multiple tiers. In these, several birds share a small cage which restricts their ability to move around and behave in a normal ...
A free range pastured chicken system. Pastured poultry also known as pasture-raised poultry or pasture raised eggs is a sustainable agriculture technique that calls for the raising of laying chickens, meat chickens (broilers), guinea fowl, and/or turkeys on pasture, as opposed to indoor confinement like in battery cage hens or in some cage-free and 'free range' setups with limited "access ...
An example of the use of cryoconservation to prevent the extinction of a livestock breed is the case of the Hungarian Grey cattle, or Magyar Szürke. Hungarian Grey cattle were once a dominant breed in southeastern Europe with a population of 4.9 million head in 1884. They were mainly used for draft power and meat.