Browsing by Author "Brandes, Jasmin"

Wooden breast is muscle myopathy occurring in broilers, myopathy forms hard and pale connective tissue areas in broiler breast muscles. When wooden breast is occurring also some other myopathies can coexist: loose muscle structure and white stripping are visible on breast muscles. The myopathy is relatively new and it was noticed approximately ten years ago in greater amounts. The subject of this thesis was to study wing flapping and how it affects the morphology of breast muscles and bones and whether there are links between them and wooden breast prevalence. The literature review handled muscle morphology and bones morphology and how muscles shape changes when they grow in size, how muscles and bones grow normally and how the exercise of the muscles will affect wooden breast prevalence. In the literature review the anatomy of broiler movement and especially the anatomy of bones and the muscles that are involved in wing movement is handled. The study is made by raising 171 broiler birds divided in three groups: Group A birds have feed and water on floor level and birds do not have to use their wings. Group B birds lived same way as A-group until at day 25 drinking water is moved to platform which is higher than the floor level. Birds had to fly to platform and down when they need water or feed. Group C feed and water were on floor level but after 3 days water was risen on the platform and platform was risen gradually when birds grew and all birds of the Group C learned how to get to platform. From the original 171 birds 17 were sacrificed outside the study due health reasons. The birds (171-17 i.e. 154) were terminated 20, 30 or 41 days old in 40, 58 or 56 bird batches. The percentage of termination was roughly equal in each group on each termination, except at Day 20, when Group A and Group B had had the same treatment, and there were no terminations in Group B. The aim of this thesis was to study effects of wing flapping to broilers morphological changes. This thesis showed that there were no significant differences in Group A and Group C between studied properties. Wing flapping showed no significant differences during sample termination days in morphological properties.