The importance of temperature control in optimising chick health

摘要

Chicken embryos and newborn chicks are extremely sensitive creatures, especially in regard to environmental temperatures. Low temperatures, including those resulting from spray vaccination, may have a dramatic effect on the birds' feed intake and stimulation of the immune system. Chickens are homeothermic, which means that, within limits, they can regulate their own body temperature, much as mammals do. However, they are not born that way. During the embryonic phase, chickens are poikilo-thermic, which means that their body temperature follows that of their environment, as in reptiles. The difference with reptiles is that they can function properly at a wide range of body temperatures: they simply adjust their metabolism accordingly. Chickens achieve ideal development at optimum body temperature, but in the poikilothermic stage they cannot maintain that temperature themselves. This phenomenon is well known in incubation. In the incubator we set the temperature very precisely to bring the embryos exactly to optimum temperature. In an ideal situation, heat production by the embryo, heat loss from the egg and the environmental conditions are so well balanced, that the temperature of the embryo stays exactly at its optimum.