Location: Poultry Research
Project Number: 6064-13000-014-013-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2024
End Date: Jul 31, 2029
Objective:
The goal of this research is to enhance poultry health and production through improvements in hatchery and rearing environments. Specific objectives include: 1) Determine the effects of litter addition rates on prevalence and populations of E. coli in broiler litter over a 42 day production period; 2) Characterize transmission rates of E. coli within the hatchery environment during a typical commercial incubation period; 3) Characterize thermal environments of commercial hatchery environments to validate computational models of hatchery heat and mass flow; 4) Construct fluid models of poultry incubators to characterize particulate matter transport among newly hatched chicks; 5) Application of fluid models to investigate APEC exposure risk in commercial hatcheries.
Approach:
The goal of this research is to mitigate the transmission and effects of E. coli within the rearing and hatching environment for commercial broiler production. The results of this cooperative research will enhance disease control measures in commercial broiler production and the US poultry industry as a whole. A combination of live production and incubation experiments will be conducted to provide data from which to continue development of computational models to predict effectiveness of technologies and management strategies to mitigate colibacillosis infections. A series of experiments to evaluate litter management techniques including litter additives, bedding source, and moisture reductions will be conducted to determine the effectiveness in reducing E. coli populations and subsequent transmission in live broilers. In parallel, transmission of E. coli within the hatchery environment will be evaluated using small scale commercial style incubators and inoculated eggs to ascertain transmission routes and rates within the incubator. These data will be used to formulate aerosol transmission models within the hatchery environment including incubation equipment and air handling systems.
