What is Breakout Analysis?
A hatch breakout or breakout analysis is a useful tool for solving hatch related problems and help improve certain areas to enhance overall performance. In a nutshell, breakout analysis is carefully examining clear or unhatched eggs by opening them up to understand at what stage of incubation embryo mortality has occurred.
In order to perform breakout analysis, five sample setter or hatcher trays (chosen from different positions within the incubator) should be identified. Breakout Analysis is of three types:
- Fresh Hatching Eggs
- Candling Eggs at 7 to 12 days of incubation
- Breakout at hatch time/day
Why Perform Breakout Analysis?
It is a less known fact that as a hatchery owner, you might be throwing away valuable information in your hatchery waste. This information could help you solve problems related to hatchery and breeder flocks. This valuable information held by the unhatched eggs are very important to improve hatchability & profitability. Breakout Analysis is performed for various such reasons.
One good reason to perform the breakouts is to understand in detail about the causes of a disappointing hatch. In some cases, hatches do not go as planned and the number of chicks is bound to be way less than the actual estimate. At such times, breakout analysis is a reliable way of finding out what the problem was.
In some cases, a breakout analysis is used to compare and evaluate new incubation profiles with the current ones and improve results accordingly.
Above all, the most important value of the breakout analysis is found in the historical analysis. Routine breakouts and the data analysis can help you evaluate your breeder farms, various environmental conditions and individual hatcher performance. With a right choice of poultry management software, examining the weekly/monthly data and reports to perform periodical analysis, is an easy job.
Interpretation of Results
In order to understand the complete picture, the results of a breakout analysis should be combined with other data. This includes hatchability records, incubation information, information on hatch timings and breeder performance records. A poultry management software can help you keep track of all this data without much of a hassle.
Once you have the records, it is important to know or understand that there are two main periods of embryo mortality.
- 3-5 days
- 17-19 days
A very high mortality at any other development stages is not a normal condition. Usually, high incidences of mortality at a particular development stage indicates an acute problem. Understanding the embryo abnormalities is as important as the rest of the procedure. They can be associated with specific problems related to nutrition, incubation, diseases etc. However, one should also know that same abnormalities can be a result of multiple problems as well. An experience of hatch breakouts with a perfectly fine hatching flock is very important in order to understand the difference between what is normal and what is abnormal.
Conclusion
An egg tells a detailed story of the timeline of events, starting from when the egg was formed inside the hen all of the way till the hatching process. A brief amount of time spent on performing breakout analysis will pay large dividends by increasing the overall efficiency. When combined with other useful data, breakout analysis is a very useful hatchery management procedure.
Livine’s poultry management software offers a unique hatchery module that enables you to manage your hatch by analyzing all the data and performing monthly checks to improve the overall profit.
