Dr Fenny lediue opined that hatching is a critical period when the day old chick takes to lung breathing and starts moving to a comfortable zone and also towards water and feed. For this process, hatcheries should provide proper ventilation, nutritious feed and clean water. With these, the gastrointestinal tract (an immunity boosting organ) becomes stronger so that early chick mortality may be reduced, allowing chicks to withstand adverse environmental conditions and achieve enhanced, healthy growth.

With mortality rates of day old chicks in India said to be high compared to developed nations, Dr Fanny Ledieu said, “The mortality rate could be brought down considerably with early feeding of nutrition and ‘clean water.’ Though the mortality rate had come down from what it was in 1983 to 2017, there are still challenges at the hatchery level and also in transportation which need to be resolved.”

“If the transportation time of chicks is over four hours, there should be controlled atmosphere in the truck. If there are issues with transportation, the risk of losing the chicks was high or there would be weight loss,” added Dr Fanny Ledieu.

Dr H. B. Nataraja, commercial nutritionist at Higain Feeds said: “With early chick nutrition, the mortality rate would come down from 0.15 to 0.05 percent, while breast meat yield would go up.” Poultry farmers in India, he said, should stimulate the initial feed consumption. Underscoring the importance of early nutrition, he said that it would lead to development of digestive organs of the chicks by up to 600 percent.

Dr P.Nallappa, Chairman, technical committee, KPFBA said: “It is important to introduce best practices in the Indian poultry sector and early nutrition is one of the factors to enhance India’s poultry production.”

The President of KPFBA, Mr K. S. Akhilesh Babu said: “KPFBA would be organising a series of such seminars to give insights to the poultry farmer on how to improve the stock and add to the nation’s wealth.”