Poultry Production and Hatchery Management

Learn the principles of poultry biosecurity, including conceptual, structural, and operational measures for preventing disease introduction and spread in poultry farms.

Learn how to judge broilers for meat production using a 100-point scorecard covering appearance, health, breast, back, legs, thighs, and feathering.

Learn about culling of layers and the key characteristics used to identify good and poor layers, including health, feathering, plumage, comb, abdomen, bones, skin, and vent.

Learn the key characteristics of good and poor birds used in poultry judging, including head, body, plumage, pigmentation, temperament, appetite, and other traits.

Learn poultry judging, including production and standard judging, layer evaluation, scorecards, health, body conformation, pigmentation, molting, comb, wattle, vent, and culling.

Learn the major selection methods in poultry breeding, including pedigree selection, recurrent reciprocal selection, tandem selection, independent culling, and selection index methods.

Learn selection in poultry, including natural and artificial selection, individual and family selection, progeny testing, within-family selection, collateral relatives, and combined selection methods.

Learn the different methods of mating in poultry, including pair, stud, pen, flock or mass mating, and artificial insemination, with their advantages and breeding practices.

Learn the systems of breeding and mating in poultry, including random mating, inbreeding, assortative mating, outbreeding, crossbreeding, backcrossing, and grading up.

Learn the key differences between qualitative and quantitative traits in poultry, including their inheritance, genetic control, variation, gene effects, and environmental influence.

Learn about sex-influenced traits in poultry, including hen feathering, the H and h genes, genotype-phenotype relationships, and sex-specific expression in males and females.

Learn about qualitative inheritance in poultry, including sex-linked traits, auto-sexing, plumage color, barring, feathering, and sex-linked dwarfism.