The most important benefits of early feeding

Dr. Inge van Roovert-Reijrink

To improve the environment and well being of the chickens post hatch, HatchTech developed a new hatcher, which is called HatchCare. In HatchCare, chickens are provided with their first necessities of life; feed, water, light, and fresh air at the correct temperature. This research article gives you deeper insights into the benefits of early feeding.

Every factor that increases the variation in embryo development before or during incubation also affects the length of the hatch window. Two factors that have a large influence on the hatch window in commercial incubation are the mix of egg batches that is made by the hatchery personnel (mix of storage durations or breeder flock ages etc.), and incubator design, incubator operation, and incubation profiles or in other words: how uniform the air temperature is inside the incubator.

Nowadays, incubators become larger to reduce the cost price per egg. When incubators increase in size, the chance that batches of eggs of different breeder flock ages or storage durations are mixed increases. In addition, the design of the incubator becomes more crucial to provide uniform incubation conditions to all eggs. Due to the mix of egg batches and nonuniform incubation conditions the length of the hatch window in larger incubators can increase. An important question is: why should we concern about the hatch window? Download the entire article via the button below.