Monogastrics - Breeding in animal production (lessons from the past)

11 important questions on Monogastrics - Breeding in animal production (lessons from the past)

What is the primary production goal of monogastrics?

  1. Efficient production of meat and/or eggs
  2. Efficiency: e.g. Feed conversion rate: kg feed/kg end product
    • pigs - 2.65
    • broilers - 1.7
    • laying hens - 2.2 (kg egg)

What is the first method of selection for efficiency?

Body weight at slaugther

Why does selection for fast growth contribute to better efficiency?

There has been an increase of five times the weight compared to fifty years ago. This contributes to efficiency. Nowadays we slaughter the broilers at 2kg, this takes 5 weeks. By increasing the growth, we have reduced the days to slaughter and the body maintenance has decreased. The consumed protein is much more spend to the production of the end product. That is how to improve efficiency, to reduce the maintenance.
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What are three environmental improvements in which breeding develops?

  1. Conditioned housing
  2. optimized feeding
  3. hygiene disease prevention

What is a physiological limit?

The physiology (functioning) of an animal cannot support the high production anymore (given the environment)

What are five examples of physiological problems?

  1. Higher disease susceptibility
  2. Higher stress
  3. Lower fertility
  4. Shorter life span
  5. Lower resilience to environmental fluctuations

What does the physiological limit osteoporosis within laying hens entail?

Bones are calcium buffer for egg production. When a laying hen has osteoporosis it means the decalcification of the bones (end of lay). Between 2 - 2.5 grams of calcium is needed to produce an egg. 1/3 cannot be taken from the feed and is taken from the bones. When hens need to produce in a high frequency, there is no time for the bones to recover.

What is the physiological limit of distrubed yolk hierarchy mean?

Occurs in broiler breeders and means the irregular production of hatching eggs. Double yolks (IgF induced) and can be reduced by feed restriction.

What are causes of physiological limits?

Unfavourable genetic correlations with production. Resource allocation theory; A limited amount of resources (energy, protein) must be distributed over various animal functions.

What are the social demands and the circular system demands for the change of production systems?

  1. Societal demands: welfare, health, antibiotics, pollution
  2. Circular systems: less resources --> less optimized feed, less pollution --> less GHG

There is an increasing demand for animal sourced food. This is caused by increased income and an increasing world population. How can we cope with this?

  1. Increase production and more efficiency per animal
  2. More animals required

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