Currently we are planning to start an experment of feeding trial in chicken. We are testing different inclusion rate of diet X on the growrh perfirmance ,feed efficency ... My question is in meat type chicks is it possible to practice individual feeding ? Or taging the chicks and measuring the individual performance or puting in a pean and taking the grouo performance?
Young broiler chickens are social animals and should not be kept alone. Being in a group, they will influence each others behaviour and feed intake and body weight gain should be measured on a group basis as statistically these are not independent data, if you calculate on an individual basis.
Dear Professor,
I do agree with Professor Kan. That is not precise, accurate, practical, and scientific; the results will not be reliable. What about mortality? not recommended. However, working on ME or other similar projects is another story.
Kind Regards,
In meat-type chicken experiments, the most common method in designing the treatments is to apply each treatment on a set of groups or pens (also known as replicates or experimental units). Each group contains several birds ( usually 4 - 30 birds depending on the housing system) sharing the same conditions (e.g., feeder, drinker...etc.) and physically separated from the other groups. The response of each group is then measured. Individual feeding is not practical and time consuming. Tagging the chicks and measuring the individual performance is also time consuming. So, measuring group performance is your best choice.
Dear researcher
Because your goal is broilers and they are usually raised in flocks, your experiments in the simulated environment should be similar and the results on individual birds are not very reliable. But I think in the case of laying hens, this idea of yours is practical.
Group feeding and averaging the parameters collected is the best. Colony type cages/brooders can be used. It must be defined at what ages the investigation is to be carried out. If at 3 weeks , then individual chicks be weighed, body wt.class intervals defined and reared separately in replicates if possible. Then accordingly, per group data measurements made to approach the defined objectives
Dr. Kan has provided good information, but please be sure that you use replicate pens for each treatment. From a statistical viewpoint, the pen is the observational unit, not the individual chicken.
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