White Papers

The egg industry's transition to cage-free started in 2008 when the nation's first cage-free mandate - Proposition 2 - was introduced in California. Initially, cage-free producers chose to use community nesting systems.

Feathering’s biggest role is to serve as protection from the elements. It’s an insulation factor that keeps birds’ bodies warm so that energy can be better used to lay eggs or grow muscle tissue.

Ventilating poultry barns during cold winter months is a delicate balancing act of preserving warmth and expelling moisture. It’s imperative that heat is retained in the barn so that fuel costs stay low during the cold-weather season; however, heaters and livestock both add abundant moisture and toxic fumes to the environment. There are devastating and costly repercussions to not eliminating those environmental stressors.

Most poultry houses are designed using a negative pressure ventilation program, but free-range facilities require a different approach. Because free-range farms must provide outside access for birds, pop-doors are built into the walls.

Poultry farmers are no strangers to extremes, especially extreme temperatures. Perfect growing conditions might only exist a few days out of the year, and the rest of the time is spent trying to manufacture the perfect environment.

Sight is the most important sense for birds, as good eyesight is essential for safe flight, and birds have several adaptations that provide superior visual acuity relative to other vertebrate groups.

An effective watering system only performs as well as the farmer knows how to make it. It seems like such a simple thing, but sometimes even the smallest errors can have a detrimental effect on flock performance. Not to worry, we’re here to explain everything that you need to know to make your VAL-CO watering system (or - *gasp* - another system) work as well as it can.

Rearing pullets means growers must be aware of all the management practices that make a healthy, reproductive bird. A productive breeder hen must hit a target weight by a particular age and have proper body conformation in order to be stimulated into egg laying.

Commercial swine farming has had a long history, but it’s only more recently we see it beginning to repeat itself. When farming was more concerned with plant crops, farmers kept enough livestock to feed themselves and their neighbors.

Biosecurity is the prevention and control of pathogenic microorganisms from contacting animal or human populations. In the context of modern poultry production, it is essentially keeping the birds separate from the agents causing the disease.

Egg farmers started bringing chickens indoors in the 1940s and 1950s in order to keep them safe from diseases and predators. Today, the egg industry is facing pressure from animal welfare groups, consumers, and food chains vowing to use only cage-free eggs. The lack of unified guidelines and industry conflict on what “cage-free” really looks like have left farmers in a grey area, unclear about how to switch to cage-free housing, what housing system to switch to, and how to most effectively manage a cage-free facility to maintain optimal production.

Animal husbandry of dry (pregnant) sows in the United States is in the midst of a transition from indoor individual gestation stall housing to indoor loose housing with group pens that enables greater sow socialization, space, movement and choice. Committed to this conversion, many U.S. sow producers are actively retrofitting existing barns and designing new enclosures for loose sow housing.