Column: what would granddad do?

Not so long ago, we performed 4 different treatments on males (beaks, comb, spurs and toes) and 1 on females (beaks). If you add up the number of open wounds in males (2 beaks, 1 comb, 2 spurs, and 2 or 4 toes), you come to a total of 7 to 9 wounds per day-old chick. This is on top of the Marek vaccination.

Trying to make sense of this, it is unbelievable that the majority of the males survived the rearing period. Every treatment is an open wound and a possible entry point for bacteria, with a high risk of leg health problems.

Together with the farmer, I discussed the question of why we performed all these treatments in the past. The most interesting but also peculiar one was comb clipping. This was performed in the Netherlands and the wider EU until roughly 2000. In the run-up to the abolition of the practice, nobody really knew why we actually did this. Only the seniors in our industry can remember the reason for comb clipping.

Just 5-6 decades ago, chickens and breeders were housed in small poultry houses, where the temperature during winter dropped close to the temperature outside the house. At that time, we had very severe winters with temperatures of more than 20°C below zero. Freezing conditions outside meant freezing temperatures inside and thus the risk of frozen combs. These caused inflammation and thus mortality and grading.

But we kept on clipping combs long after we had started housing our birds in modern, insulated and heated houses, because that’s just what we were used to doing. We don’t know who was the brilliant person that eventually stopped this practice, but it helped our bird management.

Bigger natural combs have a very important role in improving separate sex feeding. The intact comb functions as a block in the grill above the female feeding system. The abolition of comb clipping is just one very good example of why we shouldn’t be applying the same management methods as granddad did.