Relationship between feeding behavior and production performance of broiler chickens based on automatic feeding system

Objective  To investigate the effects of feeding behavior on production performance of broiler chickens, and provide references for chicken management.

Method  The automatic feeding system was used to collect the data of feeding behavior and production performance for 45-day-old yellow-feather broiler chickens. The change of feeding behavior for chickens over 24 hours was summarized. The correlation between feeding behavior and production performance was analyzed.

Result  There were two peaks of feeding in one day including the times from 06:00 to 10:00 and from 17:00 to 19:00. The average feeding speed per chicken of the flock was higher in the early or late time of the feeding peaks and the highest feeding speed was about 3.0 g·min^–1. The correlation between single feeding behaviors (single feed intake, single feeding duration, single feeding speed) and production performances (average daily feed intake, average daily gain, feed conversation ratio) were significant. The average number of daily meals was significantly negatively correlated with average daily gain, while positively correlated with feed conversation ratio. The average duration of daily feeding time was not significantly correlated with production performance.

Conclusion  There is a close relationship between single feeding behavior and production performance of chickens. The production performance can be increased by selecting chickens having less number of daily meals.