7.2.2 – Poultry assessment tool

Practices related to poultry species were economically evaluated in the Task 7.2.2 “Poultry assessment tool” by Thuenen Institute, with the support of LUKE and INRAE. For the model, the expected costs and benefits of the developed strategies of improvement for slow-growing broilers (e.g. dual-purpose offsprings, male chicks of laying strains) were assessed and a price and profit margin were derived. A business model was developed to show the impact on the overall production chain.

The Deliverable ‘List of economically viable measures/strategies to enhance poultry welfare and assessment of their benefits and costs’ aims at presenting the economic viability for meat production of males and egg production of females, and concerns 3 different levers of welfare improvement in poultry:

• On-farm hatching for small batches of chicks of specific slow-growing genotypes.
• Trials (WP 6) on (cross)breeds well adapted to the low-input outdoor and organic farming systems, especially focusing on the individual variability in four strains of slow- to medium-growing broiler chickens
• Trials (on-station and on-farm) on three dual-purpose genotypes with different performance profiles (WP5) as a means to avoid the culling of layer male chicks by rearing both females for egg laying and males for meat production. A brother-sister joint analysis was performed as both female and male chicks of one genotype were reared.

Deliverable D7.3 – List of economically viable measures/strategies to enhance poultry welfare and assessment of their benefits and costs