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DIRECTORATE OF POULTRY RESEARCH STATİON FROM 1930 TO THE PRESENT DAY

​The Poultry Research Institute was established in 1930 under the article 6 of the Law Act concerning the Duties and Organization of the Ministry of Agriculture on the land of 88 decares neighboring the Agriculture Faculty by Mustafa Kemal ATATÜRK, with the purpose of "carrying out technical, economical and technologic studies to improve the poultry research services throughout the country, to evaluate the results obtained and the submit them to the distribution organization of the provinces and to the benefit of the farmers". 

Following the establishment of the Institute, the facilities required for raising birds were constructed. In order to supply the stocks of the Institute, farms in Hungary and Austria implementing advanced poultry raising methods were contacted. Agreements were made with some of them, and 273 Leghorn chicken and 19 roosters, and 176 Rhode Island-Red chicken and 26 roosters were purchased, and actual poultry growing was started as of 1931. Stocks were supplemented in 1932 with 3 roosters of known pedigree from the Rechkard Farm in Germany and 2 roosters of known pedigree in 1933 from the same farm. This Institute, which was established as a facility of growing and trials continued their works till 1938. In the same year, the Institute Center was moved to a land of 131 decares on the Ankara-Istanbul highway across the Atatürk Forestry Farm. The administrational building, improvement and production facilities were constructed on this land, and more convenient working conditions were thus ensured. Modern poultry machinery and equipments were supplied for the Institute by the virtue of Marshal Plan starting from the year 1952, while on the other hand new culture lines of chicken were imported to supply new stock material. In this context, 500 Leghorn chickens and 700 Rhode Island-Red chickens were obtained from the 1700 Leghorn and Rhode Island-Red chickens supplied from the Britain through the British Livestock Limited. In addition, 800 Rhode Island-Red and 500 Newhampshire chickens obtained from the 1410 Rhode Island-Red and 1075 Newhampshire chickens imported from the Handson Farm in Oregon, USA, and were given to the Poultry and Beekeeping Institute. Furthermore, the 1000 Newhampshire chickens out of the 29,175 granted by the World Association of Churches in USA in 1954, and a White-Plymount-Rock flock of 1111 hens and 29 roosters supplied from Yalova State BreedingFarm in 1955 were included in the production stock.

 As a result of the use of hybrid materials becoming popular throughout the world after 1950s, the Institute made it its duty to produce the hybrid parents with its own possibilities after 1965, and accelerated these works after 1970. Only the white layers were handled at first. Four maternal and four paternal lines with high egg yields were developed making use of the various imported parent lines and the pure Leghorns in the within the Institute. However, the female chicken demand of the breeders caused increase of cost because the gender differentiation in these lines is made according to the cloak and caused physical straining of the chickens; also, with the increase in demand for brown eggs, these lines lost their importance. Thus, works were shifted to develop auto-sex parent lines that produced hybrid offspring with the males were different from the females as regards the color of feathers and the rate of growing of feathers.

These works were implemented in two main branches. Firstly, the white layer parents that could be differentiated according to the rate of feather growing on the wings were developed in 4 lines (O1, O2, T1, T2). Secondly, the brown layer parents developed according to the color of body feathers in eight lines (P, G1, G2, G3, R, S1, S2, S3). Then, 4 of these lines were used as the grandparents.

After 1995 however, 10 pure lines were imported from Canada, out of which 4 were white, and 6 were brown, and the improvement studies were started on these pure lines, which no other public or private organizations have in Turkey, and only present in a few countries in the world. The three hybrids (ATAK, ATAK-S and ATABEY) obtained from these 10 pure lines giving the best yield in the conditions of Turkey were determined in these studies carried out, and these were grown and the sales in and outside the country was started. These hybrids have been registered by the National Race Registration Committee and by the Turkish Patent Institute and announced in the Official Gazette dated 22 April 2006 and numbered 26147 according to the Notification Regarding the Registration of the Layer Hybrids Developed by the Poultry Research Institute.  The only entity in our country that produce layer stocks both in the private and public sectors is the Poultry Research Institute.  All the other entities market the hybrids they obtain from the parent stocks they import.

Sale of these 3 commercial hybrid lines developed by our Institute to the commercial operations was started on the year 2004. Together with this, they are also exported to countries including Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. In addition to the chicken selling to commercial operations, the lines developed by our Institute are used for 65% of the organic egg production made in our country. The lines developed by the Institute for organic egg production, which is very popular particularly in Europe and gradually becoming popular also in our country are preferred because of their stamina.

The Poultry Research Institute continued its works in rabbit breeding and beekeeping areas together with the research works in the poultry area. It granted certificate of mastership to many producers in the beekeeping area. Later, the beekeeping equipments were transferred to the Bitlis Beekeeping Production Stations and the beekeeping activities were terminated. Rabbit unit was also assigned to the Lalahan Livestock Central Research Institute when the central research unit of the Institute was closed.

The Institute increased its capacity 3-folds through the investments made on the stock operation, and became one of the three operations in our country that made production in modern stock cages. The stock hen capacity of the Institute was increased to 30,000 from 12,000. Our total stock amounts to 60,000, out of which 30,000 hens are the project materials. In addition, all the pure lines are backed up in the newly-constructed pure line back-up unit, and waste of efforts and lines as the yield of long years has been prevented in case of need with any reason. The new incubating units that was completed in March 2010 was constructed on a total land on 11,000 square meters, out of which 2,400 square meters is closed area, and 8,600 square meters is open area. The building consists of 5 main sections that include all the units complying with the "Regulations for the Incubation Units and Stock Operations". There are 7 development machines in the incubation unit with a total capacity of 480,000 and 12 hatching machines with a total capacity of 230,400. With this capacity, it will be possible to hatch 80,000 female chickens with this capacity in one hatching for a period of 52 weeks. It has been possible to offer better services to the private sector thanks to the research and production activities in modern facilities in EU standards.

In addition, our Institute implements joint projects with universities, public research organizations and the private sector in breeding and feeding areas together with its improvement studies, and submit the results for the use of the breeders.

In the institute, total 148 projects were completed, out of which 44 were improvement studies, 42 were involved with breeding techniques, 51 were related to feeding, 9 on economics and 2 were healthcare projects.