TUCKER, GA. — The US Poultry & Egg Association (USPOULTRY) announced the completion of a funded research project conducted by researchers at Auburn University that addresses temperature effects on the development of wooden breast in broilers.

The project was partly funded through a donation by Koch Foods to the USPOULTRY Foundation.

The research project was led by Jessica Starkey, associate professor of poultry science at Auburn University, highlighting the importance of careful hatching egg incubator management. The results indicate that the cost of incubating broiler-hatching eggs at sub-optimal temperatures during early-stage incubation may lead to significant economic losses down the line.

Before the study, there was little published evidence regarding the impact of variation in early-stage incubation temperature on modern broiler embryonic skeletal muscle development and post-hatch muscle growth characteristics, feed efficiency, meat yield or incidence of myopathies in commercial broilers.

Early-stage incubation temperature treatments did not alter embryonic mortality, egg weight loss during incubation, or the proportion of male and female chicks at hatch. As the researchers hypothesized, chicks hatched from the cold treatment incubators (36.1°C) were heaviest at hatch, while those from the hot treatment (38.6°C) were 10% lighter.

Incubating broiler hatching eggs at air temperatures of 36.1°C during early-stage incubation negatively impacted broiler day 0 to 32 body weight gain and final body weight compared with the control group at 37.1°C. Incubating eggs at 38.6°C resulted in similar performance metrics compared to those incubated at the control temperature.

The study revealed negative impacts on breast, wing, thigh and drum chilled parts weights and breast yield when incubating broiler-hatching eggs received cold treatment during early-stage incubation. Birds from the cold incubators tended to have a 25-gram reduction in breast weight that resulted in a 6% decrease in breast meat yield compared with those from control and hot incubators. Incubating eggs at hot temperatures during early-stage incubation resulted in reductions in wing and drum chilled parts weights but did not impact breast, tender and thigh weights.

The researchers concluded that the cost of incubating broiler-hatching eggs at sub-optimal temperatures (36.4°) during early-stage incubation can be as much as 25 grams per bird. If breast meat is worth $0.438 per gram, that is an estimated $7.1 million per year in a typical 1.25-million-broilers-per-week integrated commercial broiler complex or $854.7 million per year for the US broiler industry as a whole.

A previous version of this article stated USPOULTRY invested $36 million into the research project, which was inaccurate and has been omitted.