LOHMANN INFORMATION
Summary The global animal industry is facing severe economic pressure due to high prices of feed ingredients. The producers must push to make maximal use of the feed. In several markets, producers are heavily pressured to reduce the use of antibiotics and are facing increasing consumer demands for high quality, safe, welfare-friendly meat. These challenges […]
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Summary Poultry diseases are recorded as a subject at the “Royal Veterinary School” in Hannover as early as 1834. Since the 1960s, poultry and poultry diseases developed into an own subject at the Veterinary University Hannover. Initially integrated into the “Institute for Animal Hygiene and Poultry Diseases”, the present “Poultry Clinic” was developed. In this […]
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Focus on optimal starting conditions for day-old chicks
Summary Theory and practice of early chick husbandry are discussed in the context of increasing public pressure to minimize and eventually eliminate the use of antibiotics in poultry production. Commonly observed mistakes are (1) floor temperatures below the recommended optimum at the time of chick placement; (2) monitoring house temperature high above chick level; (3) […]
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Poultry Eggs and Child Health – a Review
Summary A healthy, balanced diet and good nutrition are the building blocks of life. Failure to meet the substantial dietary needs and giving unbalanced nutrients in childhood can result in energy and nutrient deficiencies that adversely affect the growth and development process. As a result, these children, having malnutrition (wasted, stunted or obese), impairments in […]
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Selection for improved leg health in purebred broiler lines
Summary PPhenotypic data from 25 years of selection for leg health showed that considerable improvements have been achieved for in three purebred commercial broiler lines through accurate scoring, a stringent culling policy and identification of families with superior leg health. Heritabilities for leg health traits in four contemporary purebred broiler populations were low to moderate […]
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Longevity of high producing dairy cows: a case study
Summary A commonly recognized problem of modern dairy farms is that the extremely high milk production often leads to a shorter productive life so that it becomes difficult to maintain the herd size from own replacement heifers. The herd management of a dairy farmer in Germany is described as a case study to show that […]
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Determining the optimum replacement schedule for commercial layers: does molting pay off?
Summary When we published results of our first analysis on optimal length of laying cycles, under conditions of the German egg market 25 years ago, considering only a single cycle, it was concluded that about 1 DM per hen place per year more could be earned if a strain with persistent production were kept for […]
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