Today’s episode was filmed at the 2023 Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA and is the second podcast of two from PSA. Balchem’s technical team chose abstracts of interest from the meeting and those researchers are our guests today.
Guests: Emmillie Boot and Dr. Ramon Malheiros, North Carolina State University; Catherine Fudge, University of Georgia; Dr. Lisa Bielke, North Carolina State University; Kyle Venter, University of Pretoria; Letecia Orellana Galindo, Auburn University; and Dr. Ken Macklin, Mississippi State University; Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, PA; Cara Cash and Dr. Giri Athrey, Texas A&M University.
Today’s episode was filmed at the 2023 Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA and is the second podcast of two from PSA. Balchem’s technical team chose abstracts of interest from the meeting and those researchers are our guests today.
We kick off the show with Emmillie Boot and Dr. Ramon Malheiros from North Carolina State University. Emmillie’s research compared bell drinkers and gender-specific (different lines for roosters and hens) nipple-type drinkers for broiler breeders. She looked at the differences between egg production, egg fertility, and rooster fertility between nipple drinker lines and bell drinker lines. The major takeaway was that egg fertility was higher in the nipple drinker lines at the end of the flock cycle. (01:46)
Emmillie’s abstract is titled: “Comparison of bell drinkers and gender-specific nipple type drinkers, without catch cups, on broiler breeder fertility and egg production”
Our next guest is Catherine Fudge from the University of Georgia. Catherine is working to develop a histomoniasis infectious model for broiler breeders. Her lab is an Extension lab and a grower made an interesting observation that whenever he would place cedar shavings in his house, he noticed a drop in his insect population, and insects carry histomoniasis into chicken or turkey houses by way of a vector. Catherine began to evaluate this via benchtop experiments investigating the ability of cedar shavings and cedar extract to repel darkling beetles. (07:20)
Catherine’s abstract is titled: “Evaluation of cedar products against Histomonas meleagridis in vitro”
Next up is Dr. Lisa Bielke from North Carolina State University. Dr. Bielke presented research about the use of feed additives such as probiotics, symbiotics, organic acids, or essential oils as a way to prevent disease in poultry with the result being less antibiotic use. She emphasized that if birds are sick, and antibiotics are needed, then the birds should be treated with antibiotics, but that prevention is also key to bird health. (15:18)
Lisa’s abstract is titled: “Role of Feed Additives for Improving Health and Controlling Disease in Poultry”
Our fourth guest is Kyle Venter from the University of Pretoria. His research focuses on reducing dependence on rock phosphate by improving the digestibility of phosphorus in feed ingredients. Kyle pointed out that once phosphorus digestibility has been maximized from the diet, then one should formulate to the bird’s actual calcium and phosphorus requirements on a digestible basis, rather than using a total calcium, available phosphorus system. (23:12)
Kyle’s abstract is titled: “Evaluating the efficacy of three commercial phytase enzymes based on broiler performance and production economics”
Next in the lineup are Leticia Orellana Galindo from Auburn University, and Dr. Ken Macklin from Mississippi State University. Their research evaluates egg translucency and color intensity with egg quality parameters. Hatchability is a major issue in the broiler industry and previous research found that less translucent eggs had higher hatchability and darker color intensity eggs also had higher hatchability. In this abstract, Leticia evaluated the relationship between translucency and color intensity with internal and external egg quality parameters.
(31:05)
Letecia’s abstract is titled: “Relationship between eggshell translucency and color intensity with egg quality parameters on broiler eggs”
When in Philadelphia, what better guest to have than Dr. Benjamin Franklin? Ben tells us about his scientific research regarding electricity and lightning and gives a perspective on agriculture in his day. (45:23)
Our final guests are Cara Cash and Dr. Giri Athrey from Texas A&M University. Cara’s research is data analysis based and she modeled the impact that decreasing broiler breeder fertility could have on broiler production, the climate, and the economy. Her model predicts that declining fertility could result in large increases in the amount of feed required for broiler production and the amount of greenhouse gasses created by broiler production. (49:14)
Cara’s abstract is titled: “The Effects of Broiler Breeder Fertility on Global Food Security”
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Scott (00:14):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the pubcast we're leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. I'm here today with Dr. Zach Loman. Zach and his team picked out about I guess it's 10 or 11 abstracts of interest. And today for the first one, we're gonna be interviewing Emmillie Boot from North Caraina State. Welcome,
Emmillie (00:40):
Emmillie. Yes. Thank you.
Scott (00:41):
And her advisor Ramon Malheiros also from NC State, obviously Ramon, tell us a bit about Emmillie and what makes her special. Oh,
Ramon (00:52):
It's very special. First of all, she came from Michigan
Emmillie (00:56):
That's right. Yep. That's where I did my undergrad
Ramon (00:58):
Special
Scott (01:00):
Michigan State. Yes. Yeah,
Ramon (01:01):
Good. And Emmillie comes to me with a proposal to work with the reproduction. That's very nice. And they have been a very good students to this days. Yeah. I hope keep like that. We have develop a work with the sters to evaluate the quality of the sperm quality of those holsters for the master. And in the future, you're going deep on this to evaluate the sperm quality, the test code development, because this, the, this days is a kind of issue for the industry that go to low fertility, especially with bra breeders. Yeah.
Scott (01:40):
Excellent. So tell us a bit more about your research paper that you've presented it already.
Emmillie (01:46):
Yes. I presented yesterday and we looked at the differences between egg production, egg fertility, and rooster fertility between nipple drinker lines and bell drinker lines. So, and the big thing that we saw was that our egg fertility was higher in the nipple drinker lines at the end of the flock cycle. So we think it's a good way for producers to improve egg fertility numbers in their late age flocks.
Scott (02:14):
Yeah. So now, why were those better? Why was fertility better?
Emmillie (02:17):
That's a great question. So we took blood samples earlier in the study, that way we can run blood biochemistry to determine, but my hypothesis right now is that the bell drinkers just allow more bacteria into the bell drinker, whereas the nipple drinkers have the closed system. And the nipple drinkers we were using were gender specific from Ziggidy. And we believe that that has a component added in that the roosters weren't able to drink out of the hen drinkers. And so it kept them it, it allowed the hens to actually have access to those drinkers more often and gave the roosters more chance to have their own waterline.
Scott (02:57):
Interesting.
Zack (02:58):
So did y'all look at any actual bacteria counts or anything in the environment or in the waters?
Emmillie (03:03):
We did not take samples for that, but we could do that in our next flock, and I think that would be a really valuable way to go.
Zack (03:13):
So I used to do quite a bit with ducks and ducks. Everybody thinks need flocks of water, and I actually did a very similar trial and we looked at litter, moisture and bacterial counts and everything and saw similar to what you saw.
Emmillie (03:24):
Yeah. I actually did an internship at Maple Leaf and when I was there, I mean, a lot of people in the industry were pushing for, oh, well they need duck ponds to improve fertility, but there we weren't necessarily seeing that. We were seeing that there's the higher bacterial load, which was discouraging egg production. So I can agree with that.Yeah.
Scott (03:43):
So any plans to follow up on this study? So you're in your, you're gonna be defending your master's here soon. What's your plans after that? Gonna continue this research? Yeah,
Emmillie (03:52):
So we have a trial plan for my PhD and it won't be looking at the difference of water quality, but we'll be looking at the differences of different antioxidants in the feed to see if brew breed or fertility is improved through that. We're looking at a couple of different feed additives, one being fish meal, another one being ashwagandha that we've seen good results with fishmeal earlier in my masters. And we're hoping to see good results in chickens like we do in human medicine.
Scott (04:23):
Very interesting. Ramon, Emmillie, pleasure meeting you guys today. Okay. Thanks for joining us here at the Real Science Exchange and have a good week. Okay. Awesome.
Zack (04:34):
Bye. Prayer. Thank you.
Emmillie (04:35):
Yeah, thank you for having us.
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Scott (05:39):
Welcome back everyone, back again, once again with Dr. Zach Lowman. You've been a been a mainstay this week for me. Appreciate all the help. We're also here with Catherine Fudge from University of Georgia. Catherine, welcome to the Real Science Exchange. Glad to have you here. So first tell us a little, little bit about yourself.
Scott (05:59):
Don't have to talk about the Grand Canyon, but there's a good story in there, folks. Yeah.
Catherine (06:04):
So I'm from Raleigh, North Caraina. I did not grow up in poultry or anything related to it. And then I ended up going into kind of an ag background in high school with FFA and I met Lynn Worley Davis at the FFA convention. And she was like, do you like poultry? And I said, I don't, I don't know anything. I like eating it. And she was like, great, let's take you into a poultry one-on-one class. And I was like, okay. And so from there, it just kind of whirled me into the whole poultry world that I had absolutely no idea existed at all. And I met Robert Beckstead, who was running a lab at NC State at the time, and he got me into his tosis. I started learning about Turkey diseases and ProTool pathogens, and I realized I wanted to dive as deep as I physically could into this world. So I ended up doing my master's there on that disease. And now I'm at UGA with Dr. Sean Chin, working on histoisis and broiler breeders and trying to develop like an infectious model for broiler breeders since they're also experiencing mortality from that disease. So, yeah.
Scott (07:15):
Can you tell me a little bit about histoisis?
Catherine (07:20):
So yes, histolysis is a wonderful disease, at least I think it is. It's caused by histomyas, which it was first discovered in 1892 or three. And it was an old world pathogen that came here by way of pheasants, gold neck pheasant, or ring necked pheasants, excuse me. And they brought histamines here. And within about 20 years, it totally decimated the Turkey industry 'cause turkeys are a new world bird coming in contact with an old world pathogen. And so some really great minds at Cornell ended up discovering what it was and dubbing it histamines malagas. And by the sixties, we had a really great treatment for it, Azos diameter, diol metronidazole. And those were really effective until the two thousands when Europe and the US banned them because of their arsenic based compounds. And so now we don't have any treatments available for this disease. In the last seven years, there have been roughly 800 outbreaks of this disease leading to millions of turkeys being lost. And now, and
Scott (08:26):
That's globally,
Catherine (08:28):
That's probably within just the US that I know of. I know that France and Germany and Poland also have this issue. It's all over the world, pretty much anywhere where there are gala forms, there will be histamines as well. So it's, it's pretty global. But in the last couple years, boiler breeders have also reported losses in the first four to six weeks of age, 10 to 12%, which for turkeys, they're like, okay, we're losing a hundred percent. So what a broiler breeder is worth so much money. Even small losses mean a lot for us. So we're really trying to collaborate with both turkeys and chickens to figure out, you know, what's going on? Why is this disease so intense? Why is it so pathogenic, and how can we control it? And new, new ways to try and combat this disease. So sometimes it's a little bit non-traditional, the ways we go about it. Yeah.
Scott (09:22):
So you have a poster here at the meetings. Yes. Tell us a little bit about that, the research that you've done for that.
Catherine (09:27):
Right. Okay. So my lab is an extension lab. And so with extension comes a lot of contact with outside entities. You talk to a lot of growers, you find out what they're doing. And we had a grower reach out to us and tell us that he'd made some really interesting observations about the type of shavings he was using in his house. And he mentioned that whenever he would place cedar shavings in his house, he noticed a drop in his insect population, which I mention insects because insects are actually what carry histolysis into chicken or Turkey houses by way of the vector heis gallium. But in a roundabout way, they carry his histolysis. So he noticed that he could controlled his outbreaks when you use cedar. And so we kind of wanted to look a little more into that. 'cause, You know, anecdotal evidence out in the field is something that should never be ignored.
Catherine (10:18):
You know, farmers always make these really interesting comments and you stop and go. Never thought about doing that before. That's great. So you wanna take it back to the lab and test it and see if, you know, you can back it with science. And right now it's very preliminary. We've done just a few small, like benchtop studies where we've looked at using cedar to repel darkling beetles over a very short time period. And we have seen that cedar shavings as well as cedar extracts do have some repellency type responses to darkling beetles as well as some larval toxicity possibly that need, we need to do a lot more research before we can make any kind of claim on like whether this will work or not. But I think it's something really interesting that we could look deeper into. Yeah. Interesting.
Zack (11:07):
Yeah. So do you see a difference between the extracts and actual cedar shavings?
Catherine (11:12):
So extract, let's see, how do I put this? The cedar shavings themselves contain the volatile compounds that the extract also contains, because you have to press the tree to pull the extract out. But once the extract is removed from the fiber of the tree, it becomes more volatile. It can dissipate into the air faster. So I'm sure you've like, maybe smelled like cedar wood furniture. It's really strong and it stays really strong for like years. And it's because the fibers within the tree are actually able to hold those volatile compounds in and not allow them to all dissipate at once. But when they're free, they
Zack (11:54):
Go they volatilize. Yeah. So they don't hold as long. Mm. So I'm looking a little more further into using cedar shavings. Yeah. 'cause It's something that I think would hold longer, but I, I don't know how it will hold up to windrowing decking or, you know, just long-term use in a house. I don't know. Will feces have an impact on the volatile compounds or destroy it? I'm not sure. So I need to know a lot more before I, you know. Yeah.
Scott (12:20):
So along those lines, what's your next research study look like?
Catherine (12:23):
If I had all the money in the world, what I would do right now is I'm hoping to be able to actually put cedar shavings down in pens and put beetle traps down and count beetles weekly and see, you know, compare pine shavings in pens with live birds on it compared to cedar shavings with live birds on it. And see what the beetle counts look like. So I can compare the differences. And then also do longer term studies to see if it impacts egg hatchability, if it impacts going from larval to adult stages. And if they, one of the things I wanna look at too is in stars, which the instar is the life, the lifecycle of the larvae. So it will go through three instars, and that's pretty much like a shedding and then a regrowth. And so if we can control the instar or stop them at an instar, which we do have insect growth regulators, igs, that do that, where they pretty much prevent the larvae from becoming an adult beetle. If we have something along those lines, we can combine cedar shavings with something like an insecticide that will then kill the larvae because the larvae are a lot easier to kill than the adult. 'cause The adults have a very hard kite outer shell, and they're really tough. But if you can destroy the soft larvae, it's much easier.
Scott (13:46):
Yeah. Catherine, this has been a great interview. Thank you for joining us today.
Catherine (13:49):
Thank you. Thank you.
Scott (14:03):
Welcome back everyone. We're here with Dr. Lisa Bielke from NC State. Lisa, welcome to the Real Science Exchange.
Lisa (14:10):
Thanks, glad to be here.
Scott (14:11):
So tell us a little bit about the presentation that you've given here at the meetings.
Lisa (14:17):
So I talked about feed additives in poultry, and mostly about how we, the health side of them, I guess. There's a lot of types of feed additives. We can use them for nutrition and all sorts of things. But I work in poultry health. So that's definitely what I talked about. And the different types of feed additives and kind of what they can do and what they can't do, and sort of how we should maybe limit our expectations on them. Yeah.
Scott (14:43):
Yeah. Can you give us an idea of which ones you were looking at?
Lisa (14:46):
Yeah. So I've done a lot of them. Probiotics are the big one that I talk about the most, most because that's where I have all of the experience. But of course there's also organic acids and immune system modulators and antibiotics. Of course, there's still feed additives and we could still use them. So medications to, to treat disease in birds. And I think, I think that's about it. I may have added something else in there, but it's been a minute, so. Okay. That kind of hits all the high points. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott (15:15):
Yeah. So what are some of the key findings you shared with the audience?
Lisa (15:18):
Well, the big thing is that, number one, when birds are sick, if antibiotics are the thing that we need to treat them with, then we should definitely consider antibiotics. But the big thing to think about is how prevention is the best key to keeping healthy birds. And really we can use these feed additives, probiotics, symbiotics, our organic acids, whatever it is, essential oils. We can use them to prevent disease so that we don't need antibiotics or the medications. And I guess one of the other kind of soap boxes that I get on when it comes to feed additives is that, you know, whenever a, for a while, and it's kind of dying down a little bit, but for a while, you producers or veterinarians would want say a probiotic that would fix all of their bacterial problems because they thought of antibiotics is like this one thing that would fix all of it.
Lisa (16:13):
But in reality, we had a bunch of different antibiotics, right? There's a long list of antibiotics that keep go into birds. And so we shouldn't, we shouldn't put probiotics on an unfair playing field. And we should say, okay, we've got a probiotic that treats clostridial diseases and we've got a probiotic that can help with e coli, and it's gonna take multiple things. And, and that people need to consider whenever they're doing any of these feed additives. What am I treating? What fits in within my system? What is going to help manage the problems that I have with my birds so that we can actually set these feed additives up for success and in preventing the disease. Okay.
Scott (16:55):
Yeah. So if I hear what you're saying, it sounds like you're gonna use blends of these different probably. Yeah. And, and so seems like it'd be very difficult taking a look at each and every farm and saying, what are the problems there and coming up with that special cocktail that's gonna work. Is that
Lisa (17:13):
Right. Well, so actually, fortunately, I just talked to a vet give a talk this afternoon about the kind of how they work. And she gave me some good words here. So the thing is that the vets are in the barns with these birds on a regular basis, and so they kind of know what their problems are. They know what to expect, they know what systems they're running, they hardly ever actually see a new disease come in. So whenever they know what's going on and they've had some time to do some kind of trial and error type things, they're gonna figure out what's happening in their barns, and they know what to expect. They actually hardly ever get surprises when it comes to the diseases that they have to deal with in their flocks so they can figure it out.
Lisa (17:57):
And, and the reality is that most of them do have kind of these blends of things that they know are gonna help. They're gonna say, okay, you know, early, early birds are gonna be susceptible to e coli maybe, and then come in at about two weeks of age, we've gotta worry about the clostridial diseases. So we're gonna kind of do this combination of things to keep that calm and get the birds through three or four weeks of age, and then they're at risk for something else. So we might have to switch over a little bit. I mean, they know what's going on. Yeah.
Zack (18:24):
So do you recommend, like having like a summer cocktail blend and a winter one, does it change season or is it more once you figured out you're good to go?
Lisa (18:36):
It probably depends on the pathogen. right? So we've, we've definitely got some pathogens especially the parasites that are susceptible to the weather. And so, that is gonna change based on that. And, and it might even change based on your hatchery and, and what kind of condition your birds are coming in from the hatchery. And then, you know, if you've got, if you've got birds on an ion for, versus a chemical versus vaccination for, for imy, you know, that's all gonna change the conditions within the gut. So sort of the seasons, but also the seasons of what else are you doing to the birds at that time of year? Yeah.
Scott (19:15):
Do chickens build up resistance or not to chickens, but pathogens build up resistance to these interventions?
Lisa (19:24):
I haven't seen it a whole lot. So there are some that we kind of have to worry about a little bit, and they tend to be things like bacteria, phages. And, and that's because the bacteria can develop resistance to bacteria phages really quickly. Now, now we know that, so there's strategies with developing bacteria phage products to help overcome that resistance that we know is gonna happen. But in terms of, of some of these you know, like the essential oils or the, although some of these are new enough that maybe they haven't been around a long time, right? Because the technology to effectively apply an essential oil is just now kind of evolving. But we, I don't know that anybody has ever said, yeah, that worked for a long time and now suddenly it just quit because nobody's been using it for a long time yet. With now probiotics have been around for dozens of years now, and I've never heard anybody say our probiotics failed because bacteria have developed some other way to work around that probiotic. Yeah, they haven't, I've not heard that yet.
Scott (20:26):
Well, I guess as we kind of close things down here, Lisa, any kind of words of wisdom for life production managers out there?
Lisa (20:40):
Yeah, I already said it. Prevention is the best key. Okay. so, and also you know, work, make sure you're working with a feed additive that has some science behind it. I mean, I'm a scientist, I'm gonna say some science behind it. Yeah. Like, like, don't, just, don't just take the word of the technical manager, like go look at the data. I, it drives me nuts to look at advertisements and see where they've got references. And I look at those references and it's an abstract. Yeah. It's not, you know, actual, like a full research study that was peer reviewed and published and put out there. It's, it's an abstract and I can submit anything on an abstract, well, not anything, but I can submit an abstract and, and present it and it's not been peer reviewed and it, they could criticize the heck out of it at the presentation and nobody believes it, but that abstracts published. So you know, really look for the peer review more than one kind of go through that data. And it can be hard to read data if you're not used to it, but at least look for it and see is there at least plenty of stuff out there that's you know, really hard science on it and not just something that was put together and, and, you know, put in a box or a bag and and sold to you. Yep.
Scott (21:49):
Makes perfect sense. Thanks for joining us today.
Lisa (21:52):
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, thanks.
Scott (22:02):
Alright, we're back with Kyle Venter from the University of Pretoria. Kyle, welcome to the Real Science Exchange. Thank
Kyle (22:08):
You, Scott. Thank
Scott (22:09):
You. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Right. I think you're the only South African we've got on, on tap here this week, So
Kyle (22:15):
I come from South Africa a student at the University of Pretoria. Yeah. And also run and manage the neuro livestock research research units Yeah. Within in Johannesburg. So yeah, great to be at PSA and to be talking again on the big stage.
Scott (22:30):
Good. So tell us about the neuro livestock center. What is it? Yeah,
Kyle (22:36):
Neuro, so what do we do at Neuro livestock research? It's a research site that is we, our fundamental research is based on mineral nutrition itself. Okay. Well as integrating into commercial application. So Okay. A big focus of us is commercializing and developing a digestible calcium system. Okay. And also with that, the focus is to reduce the dependence on inorganic trace minerals as well as inorganic ma macro minerals themselves.
Scott (23:04):
Okay. Interesting. Oh, very interesting. And that kinda leads to the paper that the presentation that you had this week. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yep. So
Kyle (23:12):
The presentation I focused on this week was reducing the independence of rock phosphate itself. Okay. As you know, rock phosphates have gone up because of supply and demand, 'cause of the global shipping crisis and the Russian Ukrainian war. But there's also massive pressure from a sustainability perspective. So a lot of it ties in with maximizing nutrients and I say nutrients, I mean macro mineral digestibility itself, and also then in turn reducing antagonisms and allowing one to reduce micro minerals. Okay. Yeah. Using highly bioavailable forms. So yeah, that's what we, that's what we present on this week. So yeah. Some exciting stuff. And
Scott (23:53):
So where's most of the phosphate coming out of? You mentioned the Ukraine and Russia. Is that where a lot of it comes out?
Kyle (23:58):
A Lot of it comes out of there. There's also a lot of phosphates reserves in Morocco. China doing a lot of exports at the moment, but with supply and demand and because there's so much competition between the various agricultural sectors it obviously drives the price up. Yeah, yeah.
Scott (24:15):
And then you also mentioned that there are, there are some phosphates that are more bioavailable than others. Can you tell us about that?
Kyle (24:23):
Yeah, so you, you obviously got your various forms of rock phosphate, so your CPS and m dcps that have different digestibility coefficients, but what we are focusing on is maximizing the digestibility of the phosphorus from the actual raw materials themselves. Okay. So by doing that, improving phytase efficiency hydrolyzing the fat to making the phosphorus, that's not available to the bird actually available to the bird. And there's a few ways of doing that, such as reducing calcium that has a detrimental effect on your phosphorus utilization. Okay. So that's a few strategies that we discussed at the torque. Yeah. That's the main premise is to maximize the phosphorus in the actual feed ingredients themselves. Okay. Yeah.
Zack (25:04):
You had an interesting chart up, actually, I think I saw it two weeks ago when in where was that Italy with Rosalina had, yes.
Kyle (25:11):
With rosalina.
Zack (25:11):
And how many samples are in that? It was, there's
Kyle (25:13):
Hundreds, doesn't it? There's 55 lamps and samples. That's with our digestible calcium. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. In the determination of the limestone prediction equation there's 55 samples and it's, I think it's 782 data points Yeah. That we use to develop the prediction equation. So it's a lot of data. Yeah. So to date, it's the most robust limestone prediction equation. And we are adding more to it as we go on. So we've got some studies lined up for the end of the year and yeah. We'll be adding to that.
Zack (25:43):
Yeah. Yeah. So that, that, I dunno, that charges just every time I see it just blows me away just how it's all over
Kyle (25:48):
How variable. Yeah. Yeah, it's very variable limestone. So places such an emphasis on getting a robust, accurate prediction equation for it.
Zack (25:58):
A lot of people think it's just limestones are all the same and
Kyle (26:00):
Exactly. Really
Scott (26:02):
Yeah. Interesting. So what were some of the key takeaways that you had for the audience?
Kyle (26:07):
So some of the key takeaways was that to maximize phosphorus digestibility, one has to control calcium digestibility itself Yeah. And have an understanding on the limestone quality. And when I say quality, I mean the characteristics that define the phosphorus digestibility in the diet. So solubility speed, GMD one has to maximize phytase efficacy by selecting the correct limestone. Yeah. Once you've, once you've maximized phosphorus digestibility from the diet, then one has to formulate to the bird's actual calcium and phosphorus requirements on a digestible basis. So I know in the US a lot of commercial nutritionists are still on a total calcium available phosphorus system. If we wanna reduce the dependence on rock phosphates, we have to move to digestible system for calcium and phosphorus. That's a massive one. And I think one has to re-look at the paradigm of micro minerals themselves. We, in diets that are high in phytase, low in calcium and phosphorus, so we are reducing those antagonisms and we have more highly viable available forms of these micro minerals. So reducing the levels using high, highly available micro minerals is a great strategy at improving the sustainability and reducing the dependence of inorganic trace minerals themselves.
Scott (27:28):
Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Well, good. Thank you for that. So you're working on your PhD now? Yes. And plan to defend when
Kyle (27:39):
Early next year. Early next year, rest the plan.
Scott (27:41):
Yeah. And then the plan after that.
Kyle (27:43):
So the plan after that is to continue as the innovation manager at New Livestock research. Okay. So we've got a few exciting projects lined up. Yeah. Watch the space. There's some exciting stuff to come. Ah,
Scott (27:54):
Outstanding.
Kyle (27:55):
Yeah.
Scott (27:55):
Well, good. I'm sure you're gonna be a very successful gal, very bright young man. Appreciate you spending some time with us today.
Kyle (28:01):
Thank you, Scott. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good
Scott (28:11):
Welcome back everyone. We're here once again with Dr. Zach Loman co-host Special today. And we've got Dr. Ken Bielke from Wars Auburn, and now at Mississippi State, the department head there. And then we got Letecia Orellana Galindo, I get that right. All right, And so first of all Ken, I'd like to just kind of talk a little bit about maybe your transition from working with Okay. Leticia here and now, now department head over there at Mississippi
Ken (28:44):
State. Okay. Well, at Auburn I was an extension specialist and a researcher. My area was really microbiology. Now at in general, now the extension side. You know, I pretty much worked on whatever issue was out there within the broiler industry, the poultry industry. And one of the issues that we've been having lately is, as anyone who works with boilers knows, is the number of eggs that we can get out of the breeder, the breeders not only the number of eggs, the patch ability god thing, I can't even think of everything. Yeah. Fertility. Fertility, yeah. Is everything coming from, from the breeder side? So we had an opportunity to do some research where we were gonna look at different egg quality parameters to see if it impacted hatch. And then Leticia could probably go into a little bit more detail about that when we get to her. But when I left Auburn to go to Mississippi State, that's part of my program that I'd like to continue on because they do have some nice hatcheries there in the Department of Poultry Science here at Mississippi State. We do have some expertise in this area there. And of course there's a lot of poultry companies that are very interested to work with us. Yeah. So,
Scott (29:54):
So you mentioned Leticia. She's second year new master's program. Can you tell us tell us about her?
Ken (30:01):
Oh, Letecia, I'm, I was gonna let Letecia talk about, but Letecia, she came to me really, we were gonna do some micro, we're gonna do egg hatch sanitation. However, like I said, this opportunity came up and we, we kind of said, well, we'll give it a shot and maybe, you know, put the sanitation on the afterburner or the side burner. And we got some really exciting results, like really exciting, where we performed this study now a few different times and got some very encouraging data from it. Not saying that hatchery sanitation isn't important because it is, but this is more of a hot topic that I feel we, a niche that we could fill right now. So I'm very excited that she's been a great addition to the team and, and she'll be great no matter what she's decided to do moving forward. Yeah.
Scott (30:53):
Excellent. To see
Ken (30:53):
What happens.
Scott (30:54):
So Letecia actually attended your presentation, I think it was yesterday. Is that correct? Yesterday morning. And so why don't you go through some of the key things that you shared with the audience with your presentation.
Letecia (31:05):
Okay. Well, I started mentioning that here in the US we are setting about 244 million x per week. Okay. So that's that's
Scott (31:15):
A lot.
Letecia (31:16):
That's a lot. Yes. And the average hatchability reported by the USDA National Agricultural Statistical service was of 79.5% last week. Okay. So when we see a 79% of hatchability, we know that we need to improve it, you know, so
Scott (31:34):
And, and is that going up or down over time?
Letecia (31:36):
A little bit. Okay. So there is some variation, but no, you will not see a, you know, like a 10% variation. Now it's, it's not like that. We see variations according, per, per week, but not high variation, maybe 0.2% or 0.5 maybe. But yeah, so hatchability is actually right now a big, big hot topic. So everybody is interested in, in, in implementing new strategies to address this issue. So as we know that there are several factors that may be affecting hatchability, I mean, we think about the environmental conditions, the management of the breed forms, the incubation conditions, a lot of things. But this research is focused on the actual quality.
Letecia (32:26):
We truly believe that furthering our understanding of how the actual is related, the actual issues are related with a hatchability will, will help us to create or design more strategies to address these issues through nutrition or through better management or better strategies at the management. So we think that this research that is focused on understanding this actual issues is, is a very good baseline for furthering applications in the furthering strategies in the, in the industry. So this research is studying translucency and a color, actual color intensity. So translucency is when we, I think that the term that the industry is using is windows right? So when we candle an egg, we can see that there are some eggs that have more windows or watermarks or clear spots. It depends on how you wanna describe them.
Letecia (33:28):
And some of them have more windows than others. So it is thought that this issue, this, these windows are caused by the accumulation, the moisture, an accumulation on the eggshell, and an uneven drying after the egg is late. Okay. So it has been reported to affect bacterial penetration and also to affect thickness and strength. And recently we just foolish our va where we demonstrate that the translucency is also related with hatch abilities. We found in that, in that, in that paper, that the difference between low translucent eggs and high translucent eggs was about 7% hatchability. So that's a lot, you know, and I'm, I'm talking about hatch offsets. So it's a lot of hatch ability, a lot of difference.
Scott (34:15):
So I'm gonna assume the high translucency has lower.
Letecia (34:18):
Exactly. Yeah. So and also it's related with chi weight and about the color intensity, which is the other actual quality parameter that we are analyzing. So we know that the actual, the color of the actual depends on the breed that are breeds that are breed for genetics for brown eggs or for white eggs. But when we go to the field of a breeder form, we can see that there is a variation in the color intensity. Some eggs are a little bit more, I dunno, lighter, you can, you can tell in the, in the field. So we are trying to study to evaluate if, if there is any correlation of this, of this incidence of, of color intensity with hatchability with cheap wave and moisture loss, et cetera. So actually in the paper that we published, we also found a difference there.
Letecia (35:13):
That is, there is a correlation of, of, of color intensity where darker color X have better hatch ability to, it's pretty interesting. Well, but the about the, the, the research that I presented yesterday was more focused on understanding how the translucency and the core intensity is related with other extra quality parameters, but taking into, taking into account external and internal. So for external electro quality parameters, we consider the airway, the actual thickness, the strength, and the infrastructure and the actual weight. And for internal quality of the air, we consider the dual color. And the high units are, are h u valley. So we analyze. I don't know if you how into details you wanna go into the methodology, but we use a total of 270 x for this trial. We use an all flock because we believe we have seen, and we know that the all as, as the flock is aging, is where we start to see more issues in actual quality.
Letecia (36:18):
So we decided to run this trial for, I mean, first with an old flock. And I mean, we are planning, using the plans that we want to this thing with, with younger flocks to see how is the, how, how or hypothesis that maybe the problem is the same, but we need to, you know, actually test this. And yeah. So we use trans, we classify X by translucency, or we classify X by cord intensity, and we evaluated the, the, the, the parameters that I just mentioned. And as a result, I mean in as a proof summary on the results. So we found that this is pretty interesting that translucent X of low translucent X, the ones that have less water mart or less windows, these eggs have a thinner actual and have a lower actual weight. Hmm. So, but the thing is, in the past, in previous research, we reported that these eggs have better hatch ability and better cheek weight.
Letecia (37:26):
And, you know, made you think that an egg that have better hatchability, better cheek weight is actually having a thinner actual and an, and an actual with less weight. So we know that the chicks get their nutrients from the dog, from the aben and from the actual, yeah. Well, so the other interesting factor that we found in this research is that actually these eggs have a better g value, which means a better inner quality. So what we are thinking here is that this low term lucent eggs, even when they have a thinner actual and a lower actual weight, they are capable to maintain the quality of the e of the inner egg for longer or better than the lot lucent egg. And this is important for the embryo, for the gas and exchange.
Letecia (38:21):
I know maybe I'm gas exchange from, from the inside of the, to the outside. Yeah. So regarding translucency, we are very excited about continue evaluating these results. What else? Oh, about translucency. Another thing that we think is that the translucency is more related with the inner membrane more than with the actual. So the inner membrane, we are thinking that the inner membrane of the egg of a low translucent eggs is, has a better quality, which means that the egg is, have a better gas ex ex gas exchange ratio. I don't know if that's the proper term, but, you know, have a better capacity to maintain the good circulation for the Emery development. So yeah, it seems like there is a lot of things that we still need to understand about translucency because physiologically we still do not know exactly what is happening inside of the hand that is creating this translucency.
Letecia (39:27):
But right now there are some actually there are already companies working in some, designing some minerals to improve this issue. And they are, I mean, they have had good results, but we still do not know the explanation. The, the, you know, exactly what is happening inside of the hand that is creating this these issues with translucency. So that's why we are right now working on trying to understand how translucency may be correlated with other actual quality parameters in, inside of the egg and whatever that we can understand. So then we can have a better idea of how or how to go into the chicken and try to understand where the issue is born. So I think it's pretty,
Scott (40:14):
So do you have some hypothesis? Is it perhaps health status, inflammation, perhaps even genetic stress? Stress? Yes. Yes.
Letecia (40:22):
Well, we all you have mentioned, we think that maybe affecting, but also, and with what we believe is that the hand somehow understand that it's having an issue with translucency and it's concentrating her nutrients or her, it's trying to improve the inner membrane of the shell in order to protect his embryo. You know? So it's like, because I don't know, it's, it's some ideas that we have, but we need to prove this. We need to run more experiments and go more into this. But I think this is a very, very interesting topic. It's a, I will say that it's recently apply. I mean, we, you, I'm pretty sure that in the past this, this translucency was not an important parameter for X. It was most, maybe it was most started in Table X, the ones that we eat. Because I mean, when you go to the supermarket and you see a, like an egg that is like, you know, looks weird and have like a thin, like a watermark, you immediately think that is not a good egg. Yeah. And so maybe people was more worried there. But now we are moving that to, to breeder eggs. And I think it has a big potential. And, and you know, hatchability is a hot topic.
Ken (41:42):
Yeah. It is a hot topic. Now, Leticia, probably most of it's, the reason why you're seeing this different translucency is stress of the bird. Because, you know, when we did the study, they were birds that came from the same primary breeder company. Mm-Hmm.
Scott (42:18):
Absolutely. Do you think there could be a genetic component to it? Because, you know, some egg si or egg shape is kind of, once the female starts laying one, she kinda lays, if it's an oblong one, she'll usually keep laying those. Do you think it's kind of a, do you think it's more just what is going on in the environment that should inform it correctly that day?
Ken (42:35):
And that's one, that's a good question. And that's one that we're gonna be looking into in the future. 'cause We looked at, you know, I think you mentioned in your study we looked at ENSS birds. And we'd like to look at Cobbs as well as the other breeds that are out there, just to see if that, you know, what we saw with these seven oh eights, these older birds. Can we see that in seven oh eights with younger hens? Yep. Will it translate to, you know, Cobb or even to other, like the 308? So, I mean, there's, there could be, we just don't know. I, I would imagine, I would think that there is but we, we don't know at this point in time.
Scott (43:10):
Yeah. Well, Leticia, that was a very nice presentation that you gave a great podcast here as well. Kind of curious, what's the future look like for you? What's your what your future schooling plans?
Letecia (43:24):
Well, I have been enjoying working in research. I really enjoy this topic. And I would like to continue, I mean, furthering the research on this topic with a PhD.
Scott (43:43):
Okay.
Letecia (43:43):
Right now, I'm, I am in a, I don't know, I think that all the students in one point of their life, yeah, they have that weird moment when they, they feel that they know what their, their, their feelings, but they also have that, the idea that's maybe you know, what about going to the industry and then go back to the Yeah. To the school. And, you know, so the only thing that I can tell is for sure is that I like research. Yeah. I enjoy what I'm doing, and in the future, I wish I can work in a university as a professor, as, as an extensionist. Yeah. I really think that I, I like, and I enjoy this, this part of my life. And what I only think is that sometimes maybe the experience in the field may help you to have a better critical thinking for future research. So that's why I am still like, not sure.
Scott (44:43):
Yeah. But yeah,
Letecia (44:44):
So most likely I'm going to continue with my PhD and, and have, and actually I'm doing an internship right now in the industry and enjoying and learning. So it's
Scott (44:52):
Good. Oh, sounds like you got your head on straight and some good logic there. Whatever you decide to do, I'm sure it's gonna be a great success. So yeah. Thank you And good luck. Good luck in the future.
Scott (44:54)
hi, I am Scott Sorell. Back to with you here at the Poultry Science Meetings. I ran into a gentleman by the name, I believe your name is Ben
Benjamin (45:21):
Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
Scott (45:23):
Dr. Benjamin Franklin. And you're here at the poultry science meetings. Can you tell me what brought you here today?
Benjamin (45:29):
Well, I was curious. I saw all these feathered creatures wandering in the door and Yeah. Followed by different human beings. And yeah. I thought I'd investigate. Well,
Scott (45:39):
Tell us a little bit about yourself, doctor. What, what are, what's your doctorate in? Maybe poultry science, genetics,
Benjamin (45:44):
Heavens. No, I was given an honorary doctorate by the University of St. Andrews. I see. In recognition of my work with lightning. Okay. and I didn't discover electricity, but I found that lightning was composed of electricity. Oh, very interesting. And that was a rather new finding. Prior to that people thought lightning was an act of God, that God would hurl a lightning bolt down and strike those with whom he was displeased. And I looked at static electricity, and I found close to a dozen similarities between lightning and static. They both emit a flash. They emit a cracking sound. They sometimes you can smell sulfur. They both could ignite gunpowder. They could both be passed through water and metal. And I reason that lightning was merely another form of electricity.
Scott (46:31):
Oh, well that's very interesting. Now, I'm just kind of curious, back in your day tell me a little bit about agriculture industry.
Benjamin (46:39):
Well, once again, I was not a producer. I was a consumer. A consumer I speak to. Of good food. Some of the other founders Mr. Washington and Mr. Adams and such were farmers. They were more directly involved with it. But I was basically involved in the consumption of food. Yeah. And the consumption of food greatly increased when I went to France in 1776.
Scott (47:05):
Ah, interesting. Right here. Yes, indeed. Well, listen, I wanna thank you for stopping by and spending some time with us here at the Real Science Exchange.
Benjamin (47:12):
Enjoy your time in Philadelphia, sir.
Scott (47:14):
Thank you, Ben. Take care.
Benjamin (47:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (47:16):
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Scott (47:40):
Well, Zach, welcome back. We're here for this session with Dr. Giri Athrey and Cara Cash from Texas A&M. Thank you guys are the only Aggies we talked to this week. Giri, why don't you give us some background on your program there?
Giri (47:55):
Oh, great. Thanks. Thanks for having us. This is amazing. So I'm a geneticist by training and I lead the Avian Genetics and Functional Genomics lab there. So our research interests are actually fairly broad. So we do things related to genomic architecture of complex traits in Embroiders and then a lot of the gut health work. And because we need a lot of data analysis to generate hypotheses, we are into all kinds of big data types of endeavors also. So it's a, it's the engine, right. So we try to use experimental data and you know, analysis to come up with new ideas and, and new hypotheses. So so we are into different kinds of things and, and currently my lab, we, we have six grad students, if I'm not forgetting anyone, hopefully. And Cara is one of our new ones, so
Scott (48:59):
Very good. Well, Cara, welcome to the Real Science Exchange. Now, your paper was got an interesting title, the Effects of Broiler Breeder Fertility on Global Food Security. That's interesting and different. So why don't you tell us about that?
Cara (49:14):
Sure. So thank you for having me. Our project is data analysis based. So as we know, chicken is at the highest consumption that it has ever been in the United States, but in the broiler breeder in broiler breeders, we are experiencing declining fertility. And we know this problem exists, but we don't know how this declining fertility affects the production of the animals or our climate or the economy. So that's what our project is aiming to do, is to learn those effects so that we're better able to prepare and hopefully hopefully fix the fertility issues, but mainly to know where deficits may occur in boiler production. Okay.
Scott (49:56):
Now, where do you get all your data?
Cara (49:58):
So we have an industry partner in Texas. I cannot disclose the company Alright. But the poultry genetics have multiple layers of breeders, and we are able to get the level of broiler breeder data right before the actual broilers that and chicken that we eat. So we're able to use that data. And in my project specifically, I use what's called a stock flow model, and I use that data with a one to 5% decline in fertility, along with feed information on the daily feed of the breeders to determine how that fertility decline is affecting the number of broilers that we will have in the next 10, 20, even 50 years. Oh,
Scott (50:42):
Very interesting. Well, can you share with us some of the results you've found so far?
Cara (50:47):
Sure. So one of the main things that I think is really important, especially when in our industry is sustainability. And with our, for our declining fertility, we used a one to 5% decline. This is really conservative for the industry. The industry is facing even higher declines than this. But with this decline, I know that in the next 50 years to maintain this production, we will need an excess of 1.5 million tons of feed and it will produce an excess greenhouse gas emissions of 4.7 million metric tons. So this is gonna make a big impact on not just the producers, but the consumers. So we're still looking at how the economic impacts the different economic impacts, but we know that we're gonna need so much more feed and produce so much more greenhouse gases.
Scott (51:39):
Oh, interesting. So now you're not taking a look at all where the infertility or what's causing the infertility, you're just measuring the results of the infertility?
Cara (51:48):
No, this project is just looking at Yes. Basically projections. This is this project. However, in our lab, we do have work going on at the moment using basically looking at a sperm quality Okay. In male broiler breeders because we know that it's a male issue in the industry. Okay. 'cause When we replace the males, the fertility spikes back up again. Okay. So the male's fertility, even in the past 10 to 50 years, has declined just more and more rapidly to a point where at about 60, 65 weeks these broilers are producing, they're, they're at 50% decline fertility already at that point, and it's not economically feasible to continue feeding them. And they're replaced in the industry, but we can't just keep replacing and replacing, we gotta get them somewhere. Right. So this fertility problem is a problem and we need to have a solution for it soon. Yeah.
Scott (52:42):
So do you factor in different genetics in your model, or do you focus just on a general fertility decline across all of them?
Cara (52:49):
So we use the fertility data from the industry partner that we have. So I would say that is genetic data. Correct. Correct me if if I'm wrong, it's
Giri (52:58):
It is. So yes. So she's correct. Yeah. So what happens is, you know, because you know, there's many producers and each of them have their, you know, for the most part they're using the same kinds of model, but there are some variations. Now what I can tell you about the genetics is just talking to the primary breeders. This is not data you'll find any in any public space of course, but, but again, our numbers are, are very optimistic in terms of the fertility decline. So their challenges are actually worse and comparable between the genetics companies. So
Scott (53:36):
Yeah, I'm just kind of curious the what's causing the infertility?
Giri (53:42):
Yeah, it's a great question. So, so I mean this is you know, it kind of impacts many parts of how chickens are raised and how they're selected. So we've obviously emphasized the most economically important parts of the broiler carcass, which is the breast meat and the feed efficiency that drives there. But, but along the way, we, we've obviously, you know, deemphasized many other life history traits, right? So this, this is not new. I, you know, this is something that people have been talking about for 30, 40 years. It
Cara (54:16):
Also happens in most agriculture species
Giri (54:19):
Comment. Well,
Scott (54:20):
It's happening in humans as well. Yeah.
Giri (54:22):
So, so what happens is, you know, if you, if you take any natural organism, you have a decline in fertility over age. But we have shown, and other people have shown, for example, that in broilers, let's say high you know, performance broilers, we are contracting the timeline where they're hitting what we would in say, in humans you know, we would consider as an old age. So physiologically they are getting old much faster because their metabolic rate has to be so high. Their sense. Yeah. So, we are contracted their life span essentially. And we've seen all the effects of that at a much faster pace.
Scott (55:03):
So Cara, you're a first year master's student. What kind of future plans do you have for research? You gonna continue with this?
Cara (55:10):
Yeah, so I've been able to share with y'all, you know, the feed and the greenhouse gas emissions that we can expect. But I'm very interested in the economic effects that this has because I like buying chicken and I wanna know how much my chicken's gonna cost. So I would like to continue doing research on that. My committee members one of them is an agricultural economist. I'll be working with him on creating that price data. But I will also be working with our lab that is using the, or looking at the sperm to see the actual reason why this fertility is declining so much. So I'll continue doing these projections, but also trying to help at the same time.
Scott (55:49):
And so what's Cara's future look like? What do you plan to do after you get your master's?
Cara (55:54):
I plan on being a data analyst. Okay. I thoroughly enjoy data analytics, and I can definitely see myself working for maybe not necessarily a poultry company, but any type of agriculture company and performing their data analytics or bioinformatics work. Yeah.
Scott (56:10):
Oh, very well, Thank you, Cara. Thank you Giri, for joining today. Our pleasure.
Giri (56:14):
Thanks so much for
Scott (56:14):
Having us. A good one. Thank you to our audience as, as usual, we appreciate you spending time with us here at The Real Science Exchange. We hope you learn something. I hope you had some fun, and I hope to see you next time here at Real Science Exchange where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (56:31):
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