Challenges in organic egg-production related to the nutritional quality of foraging material and introduction of 100% organic feeding

Summary

Organc hens have daily access to foraging material and the quality are important for egg-production due to varying contents of amino acids (aa) and dietary fibres (Hammershøj and Steenfeldt, 2005; Steenfeldt et al., 2007). Supplying organic hens with appropriate amounts of protein and aa can become problematic with the introduction of 100% organic feed from 2012. The interest in growing protein sources nationally has increased in Denmark in consideration of the environment. Growing soybeans nationally would reduce import. Present hen genotypes used in organic egg-production have high nutrient-requirement, so using genotypes with lower protein-requirements could have some interesting perspectives.