The importance of early feeding

Nourishing day-old chicks is essential in order to obtain good zootechnical and economic performances. A windowed hatching process followed by intensive handling procedures and transport induces a lot of stress to the day-old chick. Climate control and the provision of the necessary nutrients are crucial in order to cope with this. Although nature provides the day-old chick with the necessary nutrients to survive through the presence of the remaining yolk, additional feeding of the day-old chick with the proper nutrients is essential to stimulate the intestinal development. The intestine being the first line of defense in disease prevention and responsible for nutrient efficiency.

The Earlyfeed GalliFirst pre-starter is developed to supply (and complement) the necessary nutrients to cope with these stressors in order to sustain the day-old chick’s needs to develop and perform excellent. A rapid, quick and stable increasing feed intake, favored by a homogenous crumbled structure as well as by its selected specific composition facilitates the transition from the yolk-nutrition to the later feed-based nutrition and enhances a smooth development of the bird. The protein sources in GalliFirst are a combination of high digestible protein sources containing low levels of antinutritional factors ensuring an optimal amino acid supply to the developing body and immune system.

To achieve a fast and balanced gut development in all segments (duodenum, jejunum, ileum and caeca), the nutrient sources combine the “known” nutrients of the yolk with the later plant-based nutrients to adapt, but not overwhelm the GIT of the young animals. A distinguished additive concept based on phytogenic agents and Medium Chain Fatty Acids (MCFAs) leads to a balanced and resilient GIT, after the young birds already had to experience a lot of stress during the first hours of life. GalliFirst is only conceptualized for the first days (up to 2 days of age) and mainly to stimulate feed intake as early as possible. The nutrient levels of the feed are formulated to ease the transition to the usual starter feed avoiding any drop in feed intake, which is essential to obtain good performance.

GalliFirst can be applied under all circumstances, even when stressors are minimized as is experienced in trial executed on a Belgian farm.

Set up:

These field data clearly show the effect of GalliFirst on feed intake and hence on weight gain and feed conversion with a low mortality of 1.8% over both groups.

These observations are confirmed by other clients in other regions, especially when transport time was long, DOC quality was suboptimal or when origin of DOC came from mixed parent stock farms. All circumstances broiler farmers are faced with regularly.

In addition to these effects, also positive effects on uniformity, early feed intake and reduced selection/mortality were observed in flocks fed with GalliFirst.

These early feedback from the market indicates, that administering specific DOC feeds as early as possible is crucial to achieving good performance in difficult times under suboptimal conditions. Even in optimal conditions, an uptick in performance can still be achieved with such an early-feeding concept.