A carefully controlled that avoids crowding, chilling, overheating, or frightening is almost universal in poultry farming. Cannibalism, which expresses itself as toe picking, feather picking, and tail picking, is controlled by debeaking at one day of age and by other management practices. The feeding, watering, egg gathering, and cleaning operations are highly mechanized. Birds are usually housed in wire cages with two or three animals per cage, depending on the species and breed, and three or four tiers of cages superposed to save space. Cages for egg-laying birds have been found to increase production, lower mortality, reduce cannibalism, lower feeding requirements, reduce diseases and Parasites, improve culling, and reduce both space and labour requirements.
Poultry breeding is an outstanding example of the application of basic genetic principles of inbreeding and Crossbreeding as well as of intensive mass selection to effect faster and cheaper gains in meat and maximum egg production for the egg-laying strains. Maximum use of heterosis,or hybrid vigour, through incrosses and crossbreeding has been made. Rapid and efficient weight gains and high-quality, plump, meaty carcasses have been achieved thereby.
Among the world’s agricultural industries,Chicken breeding in the U.S. is one of the most advanced. Intensive nutritional research and application, highly improved breeding stock, intelligent management, and scientific disease control have gone into the effort to give a modern broiler (meat chicken) of uniformly high quality produced at ever-lower cost. A modern broiler chick can reach a 2.3-kg (5-pound) market weight in five weeks, compared with the four months that were required in the mid-20th century. Additionally, annual egg production per hen has increased from about 100 in 1910 to over 300 in the early 21st century.
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