Several dietary alternatives to feed withdrawal have been proposed to induce a molt in laying hens. This study compared the behavior of laying hens on an alfalfa crumble diet (ALC) to hens that were either in a conventional layer diet (FF) or hens that had feed withdrawn (FW) during a 9-d trial. Each treatment consisted …
An experiment was conducted using 336 White Leghorn hens (60 wk of age) randomly assigned to one of four treatments that consisted of feed removal for 4 or 10 d or no feed removal with ad libitum access to 95% corn or 95% wheat middlings molt diets that contained supplemental minerals and vitamins. At the …
Induced molting is a management practice used primarily by commercial egg producers to optimize the utilization of their layer flocks. Historically, flocks produced eggs for a laying cycle of 1 yr duration and then were sold. With induced molting, flocks are molted and returned to lay for additional laying periods, thereby spreading fixed costs over …
Two commercial strains, Hy-Line W-36 and DeKalb XL, were moved to a laying house at 18 wk of age. They were housed 6 hens/layer cage at 2 densities (361 and 482 cm2/bird) with 2 replications each per strain/density combination. The high-density treatment contained 24 hens/replication and the low-density treatment contained 18 hens/replication for a total …
This experiment was conducted to determine the effects of cage location and tier level with respect to light intensity on …
During the past decade research work has indicated that ahemeral cycles could markedly influence egg production, shell quality and egg …
Light patterns have less effect on numbers of eggs laid by current stocks than on those of forty years ago, …
1. A total of 240 Shaver White and 240 ISA Brown pullets that had been reared in multi-bird cages on …
The age at which sexual maturity occurs in layers can affect flock performance, egg size, and flock income. In this …
The chicken eye can discriminate light color, and different light wavelengths affect egg quality. In this study, we used blue …
Two experiments were conducted in successive years to determine the performance of pullets lighted at 16, 18, or 20 wk. …
The early rearing environment plays an important role in the development of many behaviour patterns and it has been shown …
In 2 trials, including 2,768 birds in total, 3 different perch arrangements were evaluated in furnished 8-hen cages for laying …
1. In order to investigate the effect of perch width on perching behaviour of laying hens, two experiments in which …
This paper describes how birds move between horizontal perches at different heights with different angles separating them, using the time …
For night-time roosting domestic fowl show a strong priority for high perches. Following the anti-predator hypothesis the height of a resting site should however be more important for the fowl than roosting on a perch. Here we tested whether laying hens prefer high resting areas without perches compared to low resting areas with perches. In …
1. The EU laying hen directive, which bans standard battery cages from 2012, has implications for animal welfare, particularly since housing laying hens in extensive systems, while increasing natural behaviour and improving bone strength, is associated with a greater level of bone fractures, predominantly of the keel bone, compared to birds housed in cages. 2. …