Precision livestock farming in egg production

This article focuses on precision livestock farming (PLF) as it pertains to egg production. Specific contents include: (1) an overview of evolution in the egg industry that is reflective of what is now known as PLF and the new trend of egg production, (2) prominent characteristics of modern egg production systems that necessitate further development and adoption of PLF technologies, (3) some examples of PLF tools or technologies for establishment of science-based production guidelines or applications in field operations, and finally (4) outlook of PLF for egg production. For the fundamental principles and elements of PLF, readers can refer to the opening paper by Berckmans (2017) in this issue. Disciplines Agriculture | Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering | Poultry or Avian Science Comments This article is from Animal Frontiers 7 (2017): 24–31, doi:10.2527/af.2017.0105. Posted with permission. This article is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/abe_eng_pubs/824 Evolution of the Egg Industry Egg production has undergone remarkable advancements over the past six decades. A recent life cycle analysis (LCA) study on the U.S. egg industry, conducted by the Egg Industry Center (Pelletier et al., 2014), revealed drastic reductions of 54–63% in total environmental footprints (greenhouse gases, acidification and eutrophication emissions) from 1960 to 2010. In the meantime, egg supply increased by 30%. These outcomes stemmed from advancements in poultry breeding and genetics, nutrition, disease prevention and control, housing equipment and environmental control, and utilization efficiency in feed and other natural resources as well as increased crop yields. For instance, during the period of 1960– 2010, laying hens in the USA showed a consistent increase of 1.16 extra eggs each year, i.e., 58 extra eggs per hen annually from 1960 to 2010. Feed conversion (FC) (kilogram of feed intake per kilogram of egg output) improved from 3.41 to 1.98 for the same period. Protecting the birds from the influence of seasonal climates has made their productivity much more consistent year-round. An example of maintaining relatively constant indoor temperature despite the largely fluctuating outside weather is illustrated in Figure 1. The same LCA study also identified two “hot spots” that have profound impact on environmental footprints of the operation, namely, feed efficiency and manure management, where further improvements should be focused on. For instance, while FC averaged 1.98, it ranged from 1.8 to 2.2 for the laying-hen flocks surveyed. Clearly, those operations with a poorer FC of 2.2 can particularly benefit from exercising some PLF principles and practices. While the egg industry enjoys these highly commendable advancements and always looks for new ways to provide the population nutritious and affordable protein at unprecedented efficiency, new challenges never stop emerging. Today, concerns over animal welfare or well-being have led to increasing pressure for the industry to develop and adopt alternative egg production systems that better accommodate natural behaviors, thereby, yielding plausibly improved welfare of the animals. Accordingly, new guidelines or regulations concerning how eggs will be produced now and in the future have been established in various parts of the world, predominantly the European Union (EU) and USA. The banning of conventional cage production in the EU as of 1 Jan. 2012 is an example of the movement toward alternative housing systems. The changes in distribution of layer housing styles in EU from 2012 to 2014 are depicted in Figure 2. In the United States, the state of California passed Proposition 2 in 2008 that went into effect 1 Jan. 2015. The law stipulates that all shell eggs sold in California must comply with the rules that include allocation of at least 750 cm2/hen living area (compared with the current industry standard of 432 cm2/hen) when a cage houses at least nine hens, plus the periodic on-farm food safety inspection. To date, more than 100 retailers, grocers, restaurant chains and entertainment companies in USA have pledged to source only cage-free eggs by 2025 or 2030. These pledges amount to more than 72% of the current U.S. national layer inventory that would have to be converted from the present mostly conventional cage production systems (~90%) to cagefree production systems. A recent study conducted through a private-public coalition partnerSrce: © 2016 A dobtock.com Precision livestock farming in egg production Hongwei Xin†‡ and Kai Liu† †Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50014 ‡Egg Industry Center, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50014