Influence of Range versus Confinement Rearing on Growth, Feed Consumption, Egg Production and Livability

MANY practical poultrymen still prefer to grow pullets and breeding cockerels on range and also provide the breeding flock with pasture. They believe that laying house mortality will be less and egg production and hatchability greater when the birds have been provided with range than when kept in total confinement. Elvehjem and Sober (1943) have pointed out the nutritional significance of grass. They have shown that grasses contain appreciable amounts of many of the well known nutrients and are rich in as yet unidentified factors. Heuser, Norris and Bruckner (1945) have stated that the benefits attributed to pasture rearing as compared with confinement rearing are various and include: improved health resulting from better nutrition; in many cases more sanitary conditions; and more favorable management. Tomhave (1939), Stephenson and Bryant (1944), Heuser, Norris and Bruckner (1945) and Hoffmann (1945) have reported that rearing chickens on range resulted in no greater egg . . .