Designing Hydra Peck: A wet-feeding system for broilers

EngD Defence

Summary

Currently, the poultry sector is relying only on dry feed in the form of mash and pellet, mainly due to technical reasons such as ease of use. However, the major part of the environmental burden of broiler farming comes from feed production. The use of moist feeding in poultry diets has been proven as a more circular and sustainable approach, while ameliorating the birds’ health and welfare and improving their early feed intake and physiological development. It also leads to less feed-food competition and lower energy use for a feed-drying process and related costs by using alternative wet ingredients (co-products from the food industry). However, some major challenges need to be tackled before this diet can be implemented in practice, mainly the design and implementation of a feeding system that can provide such a diet to chickens. A moist poultry feeding system, Hydra Peck, has just been designed that allows storing, mixing and distributing a wet diet to chickens. Our proposed solution, a high-moisture-diet feeding system, will improve the chicken’s health and welfare, increase the average farmer’s profits, and decrease the Carbon and Nitrogen footprint of broiler farming. It will enable the chickens to consume a diet that is closer to their natural feeding preferences, and allow for a higher flexibility in ingredients’ choice, making the sector more sustainable.