A fresh New Year has started, let’s hope that 2021 will become a brighter year for all of us. Vaccination programs are in full swing in many parts of the world, let’s hope that they will become available to all that need them the most. We are pleased to see that more and more opportunities to deliver Parent Stock and day-old chicks have been restored despite the COVID-19 and HPAI restrictions. It also shows that investing in compartmentalization and building multiple breeding centers across the globe was the right thing to do for us. Most of all we should thank you, for your trust in our products and our people, and for the patience that sometimes we have been asking from you in these past months. Together we can help to make a significant contribution to sustainable egg production all over the globe. In this edition of Layer Vision we have been able to get some stories from the field. Our colleague Yaroslav Nemirovsky has interviewed Arthur Holdoenko, the director of one of Russia’s largest Integrator companies Sinyavinskaya. And we have been able to conduct an interview with Mr. Taleh, he shares with us how he managed to cope with the pandemic, resulting in keeping his ISA Brown flock in Sierra Leone over 113 weeks of age. In this edition, we also highlight a recent trend in parts of Europe: the growing of layer males. A practice that became rare in Europe during the past decades (contrary to many other countries in the world where it remained common practice) but seems to be on the rise with the ongoing discussion of the culling of day-old male chicks.
We have invited our friend from the egg-industry, Dr. Zavala, one of the world's most renowned expert on poultry health, to contribute to this Layer Vision. He took this opportunity to write an article on flock performance, health and livability through a multifactorial approach.
We have strengthened our research collaboration with Dr. Toscano and his research group from the University of Bern for the coming years, we are joining forces in the HenTrack project. At Hendrix Genetics we also conduct research on the breeding and genetic selection of insects, as insects might be the feed for the future! This 24th edition of Layer vision is concluded with the results achieved by the Dekalb White laying hens in the 15th Bavarian (Germany) Random Sample Test for Laying hens in floor housing systems.
Thank you for reading, we hope you enjoy!