A few months ago I visited a new customer in Latin America who had only recently switched from multi-stage to single-stage incubation. A week before my arrival, the hatchery manager informed me that having applied the set points I had recommended to start with, taking the requirements of the specific breed into consideration, he was generally quite happy with the results being achieved in the hatchery. Hatchability was 3% better than before, although there seemed to be a higher incidence of first week mortality among the single-stage chicks in the broiler farm when compared with the multi-stage chicks. He also informed me that chick weight seemed high, at 71% of original egg weight, and now he was experimenting with reduced relative humidity set points in the setter.
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