Evaluating two systems of poultry production: conventional and free-range

• Autor(a) principal: Lima,AMC
• Data de Publicação: 2005
• Outros Autores: Nääs,IA
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Journal of Poultry Science (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-635X2005000400004
• topic: Broiler; free-range broiler; poultry meat; welfare

The improvement in production technology was the major factor that lead Brazil to become the third largest poultry producer. The improvement was world´s based on the careful control of several aspects, including which nutrition and management (environment, health and rearing systems). Nowadays, the search for good welfare conditions is a global tendency in animal production. Concomitantly, an extensive production system of free-range broilers has been increasing in Brazil. This study evaluated in situ production indexes of two different commercial broiler productions, an intensive and conventional (farm A) and a semi-extensive free-range production (farm B), in order to assess the relationship between productivity and management. It was observed that the physical environment in farm A presented higher temperatures and relative humidity. Based on the results, the production index was better in farm A than in farm B. It was not clear that the production index was related to inadequate welfare of broilers under the conventional rearing system.