How Can Laying Hen Production Performance Be Improved? An Analysis of Influencing Factors
Laying hen production performance is affected by breed, environment, disease, and feeding management. With pure genetic quality, a suitable environment, disease prevention, and uniform body weight, feed intake, and bird distribution, excellent production results are certain to be achieved.
?Breed Quality
Day-old chicks carry the material basis of the breed's heredity, and the merits of a breed are reflected in the quality of the chicks. Chick quality is usually evaluated by purity of breed and purity of health. Pure breed quality means pure bloodlines that are not crossbred; pure health means being robust and free of parasitic, bacterial, and viral pathogens. In actual operations, people often focus only on price and not on quality, and only on body weight and not on blood testing. Therefore, choosing a good breed is key: first, choose a major brand; second, conduct preliminary research and inspection; third, carry out quantitative testing and detection of indicators.
?Disease Prevention and Control
Good vaccination and prevention of flock-wide disease outbreaks are the prerequisites for ensuring that laying hens reach their production potential, and bacterial diseases and metabolic diseases must not be overlooked. The measures for disease prevention and control are: establish a system, apply comprehensive prevention and control, use both killed and live vaccines, repeat vaccinations, select the correct serotype, rely on cross-protection, and practice closed housing during key seasons.
?Housing System and Environment
The housing system determines the production environment for the birds. Thanks to scientific and technological progress and breakthroughs, the natural environment across the country no longer has much influence on laying hen production performance. At present, commercial laying hen housing systems are transitioning from simple, primitive low-density full stair-step cages to high-density stacked layer cages, and open-sided cage housing is being replaced by environmentally controlled indoor housing. The environment inside the henhouse directly affects how well the birds express their production performance, so temperature and humidity should be regulated within a suitable range, the minimum ventilation requirement should be met, and harmful gases and dust inside the henhouse should be well controlled.
?Feeding Management
Feeding management affects every aspect of the birds' production performance: management skill is a soft capability that takes time and practice to build up; people are the ones who carry out feeding management; systems, experience, incentives, and emotions affect people's feeding behavior; feeding standards are the operating guide for feeding management; and uniformity of body weight, feed distribution, and bird numbers is the basic requirement of feeding management.
The uniformity of the birds' body weight seriously affects the laying performance of the flock. The rearing process for pullets should be oriented toward uniformity, and the laying period should also involve continuous attention to flock uniformity.
The nutritional level of the feed must conform to feeding standards, but uniform feeding is even more important. Uniform feeding during the rearing period is what ensures uniform body weight, and uniform feeding during the laying period is what ensures a stable laying rate. Only uniform feeding can bring out the greatest effect of the feed, and ensuring uniform feed distribution is the way to reduce hidden feed waste.
Make the number of birds in each small cage consistent, ensure consistent body weight development of pullets as well as consistent feed intake of laying hens, adjust the flock through each vaccination, and promptly select out sick, disabled, and weak birds through inspection.