New Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Hatching Eggs, Breeders, Chickens, and Turkeys released

Jun 15, 2016

Many organizations were involved in its creation

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

A number of poultry-related organizations have worked together with the National Farm Animal Care Council to release a revised Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Hatching Eggs, Breeders, Chickens, and Turkeys.

Some of the updates in chicken and turkey care include:

A shift in lighting regimens, which now require farmers to provide their birds with a minimum of four hours of dark time per day to rest (up from 0-1 hours per day).
New requirements for immediate vet care for sick and injured birds.
New requirements for humane euthanasia.

Chickens

“The Code of Practice supports the sustainability of Canadian poultry industries and the success of farmers,” said Vernon Froese, poultry farmer and Chair of the Code Development Committee in a release. “Stakeholder commitment is the key to ensuring that quality animal care standards are established and implemented”

The Code Committee included input from poultry farmers, enforcement representatives, researchers, hatcheries, transporters and processors. The public was also invited to provide its input.

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.