Selectively breeding for egg production?

[Fred's Hens]

The genetics corporations do indeed nest trap and employ other techniques to judge the laying of the grandparent and parent stock used in the lines they offer. They must produce millions and millions and millions of birds a year for the world wide need for 5-7 Billion birds per year.

They might employ a test pen of say, 10 birds, as a random sample of a 1000 bird flock. Something akin to that, to track the productivity of their sampled birds. They'll judge everything!!!! Growth, POL, weight at various ages, grams of egg size, blah blah blah. Nothing is left to chance and enormous expenditures of research funds go into developing and maintaining their breeding stocks. These lines are all patented and specialized. Most of these lines are completely proprietary. These lines have long ago stopped being anything identifiable as this or that "breed". They are identified by code names and numbers.

The smaller, retail hatcheries, such as BYCers might buy from, hatch and sell a fraction the number of birds. They'll both keep their own breeding stock and contract with raisers to produce fertile eggs. Some of the retail outlets have few, if any, parent birds at all. They are really just customer service centers and drop shippers.

 

[3littlebirds]

Oh no! At least you got a gunny story out of it

 

[3littlebirds]

That does make sense Fred's Hens- so group selection works for the large hatcheries that just take and incubate all of the eggs, but wouldn't work for a small flock owner who lets the chickens brood and raise the eggs themselves (since a hen can only raise one clutch at a time).

Just curious- where did you learn all this about how the large breeders operate? Do you have experience in the industry?
Also, I wonder if they just use regular trap-nests or if they have some sort of high-tech egg output monitoring system.

 

[Fred's Hens]

That does make sense Fred's Hens- so group selection works for the large hatcheries that just take and incubate all of the eggs, but wouldn't work for a small flock owner who lets the chickens brood and raise the eggs themselves (since a hen can only raise one clutch at a time).

Just curious- where did you learn all this about how the large breeders operate? Do you have experience in the industry?
Also, I wonder if they just use regular trap-nests or if they have some sort of high-tech egg output monitoring system.

No, simply a life time of reading, learning and absorbing knowledge.

A few years back, I became interested in a strain of commercial layers called the ISA Brown. This is patented layer, from Europe, and is only available to the little guy through Townline Hatchery, Zeeland, MI, I do believe. Anyway, in my research I discovered many things about the whole world wide poultry genetics corporations. Three or four major corporations dominate the world market. Akin to 98% of all birds breathing, commercially, come from these few companies. These corps do the research. They sell fertile eggs to hatcheries who in turn sell the chicks. Or, they sell the hatcheries egg to hatch to create the parent stock. This is all closely licensed and legal stuff!!! LOL

Remember that out of the Billions and Billions of chicks hatched each year, 90%+ of them are commercial chicks, for both the meat bird and laying industry. The hatcheries called out by name here on BYC are very tiny by way of comparison and focus on small holdings and retail sales. These small, retail hatcheries keep or contractually hold flocks of breeds that small holders enjoy. The huge outfits only produce meat birds and several "models" of brown egg layer and white egg layer.

Hatcheries hatch. They aren't poultry genetics corporations. Here are links to some of the world's larger corporations, if you have an interest.

This is Hendrix/Bovan/ISA/DeKalb/Shaver/Babcock/HiSex: http://www.isapoultry.com/en/Products.aspx

This is Hyline: http://www.hyline.com/

This is Wilmar: http://www.willmarpoultry.com/six_decades.asp

This is Tetra: http://www.babolnatetra.com/

The biggest of them all, Avigen: http://en.aviagen.com/

 

[aoxa]

No, simply a life time of reading, learning and absorbing knowledge.

A few years back, I became interested in a strain of commercial layers called the ISA Brown.  This is patented layer, from Europe, and is only available to the little guy through Townline Hatchery, Zeeland, MI, I do believe.  Anyway, in my research I discovered many things about the whole world wide poultry genetics corporations.  Three or four major corporations dominate the world market.  Akin to 98% of all birds breathing, commercially, come from these few companies.  These corps do the research.  They sell fertile eggs to hatcheries who in turn sell the chicks. Or, they sell the hatcheries egg to hatch to create the parent stock.  This is all closely licensed and legal stuff!!!  LOL

Remember that out of the Billions and Billions of chicks hatched each year, 90%+ of them are commercial chicks, for both the meat bird and laying industry.  The hatcheries called out by name here on BYC are very tiny by way of comparison and focus on small holdings and retail sales.  These small, retail hatcheries keep or contractually hold flocks of breeds that small holders enjoy.  The huge outfits only produce meat birds and several "models" of brown egg layer and white egg layer.

Hatcheries hatch.  They aren't poultry genetics corporations.  Here are links to some of the world's larger corporations, if you have an interest.

This is Hendrix/Bovan/ISA/DeKalb/Shaver/Babcock/HiSex:      http://www.isapoultry.com/en/Products.aspx

This is Hyline:   http://www.hyline.com/

This is Wilmar:    http://www.willmarpoultry.com/six_decades.asp

This is Tetra:   http://www.babolnatetra.com/

The biggest of them all, Avigen:    http://en.aviagen.com/

I recently watched a documentary on how the cornish X was created It was very interesting. I will have to find the link if you haven't already watched it. All this video footage was very old and in black and white, but they had a contest and the winner was this cross if I remember correctly.

 

[3littlebirds]

I didn't know it was that specialized- wow. Reading the descriptions from the companies' websites is kind of strange- it's like reading an ad for a plant variety or product. Look at this one:


Hy-Line W-36

Efficient, High Performing... More Eggs in the Carton
The Hy-Line W-36 is the world’s most efficient egg layer with excellent livability. The docile Hy-Line W-36 lays dozens of top-quality, strong shelled eggs on minimum feed intake, making her the industry’s lowest cost producer of eggs. The dependable Hy-Line W-36 generates maximum profits for the egg producer.

 

[3littlebirds]

Still not much insight into their methods though- I guess that's to be expected from a company whose viability relies on the extreme productivity of its stock, though.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Trade secrets.

That said, of course, they still employ old time methods. They cannot all be replaced. Put a sample of 50 birds in a pen and carefully track their first year out put. No doubt, they have hundreds of such pens. They have to know the weight gain, the feed consumed, the egg output of the layers they are producing. These companies have millions of dollars, hundred and thousands of workers, huge facilities, labs, vets, PhD research folks up the ying yang. It's their business.

 

[3littlebirds]

So I emailed Hy-Line hatchery, and someone got back to me and was actually pretty helpful. Apparently the industry does use high-tech nest boxes, although he didn't specify whether Hy-Line did this or whether this was only in Europe where battery cages have been outlawed. Each hen has an RFID transmitter affixed to its leg on a band, and when it enters the nest box, an RFID sensor records that the hen entered the box and also records the time spent inside the box. The egg rolls away after the hen has laid it, and triggers another sensor which records when the hen in the box lays an egg. Definitely easier than a trap-nest! Here's a link to an article about these "Weihenstephan funnel nest boxes":

http://www.cabi.org/animalscience/Uploads/File/AnimalScience/additionalFiles/WPSAVerona/10204.pdf

 

[ChicKat]

I didn't know it was that specialized- wow. Reading the descriptions from the companies' websites is kind of strange- it's like reading an ad for a plant variety or product. Look at this one:


Hy-Line W-36

Efficient, High Performing... More Eggs in the Carton
The Hy-Line W-36 is the world’s most efficient egg layer with excellent livability. The docile Hy-Line W-36 lays dozens of top-quality, strong shelled eggs on minimum feed intake, making her the industry’s lowest cost producer of eggs. The dependable Hy-Line W-36 generates maximum profits for the egg producer.

Then again, consider that this verbage is generated by the marketing department....and advertisers...... could be quite a bit removed from the down-and-dirty work of raising chickens. ;O) It is interesting that they use the number 36. I have a leghorn hybred developed by Ideal Hatchery called an Ideal 236 - I wonder if there is some correlation. Who incidentally makes claim to the same title of best egg layer, if I recall correctly.