It has been suggested that feather pecking in poultry results when foraging behaviour is redirected to feathers in the absence of adequate foraging incentives and that gentle feather pecking is a precursor of severe feather pecking. Associations have also been proposed between feather pecking and other behaviours including dust bathing and preening. Here, we present …
Abnormal behaviours, such as feather pecking, can become an even greater problem if they spread through the flock. Domestic hens are a social species and it has been suggested that feather pecking behaviour can be socially transmitted from few feather pecking individuals to many. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate whether feather pecking …
Injurious pecking remains one of the biggest problems challenging free range egg producers, with both economic implications for the farmer and welfare implications for the birds. The most widespread form of injurious pecking is feather pecking, the most damaging form of which is severe feather pecking (SFP) which has, as yet unclear, links with gentle …
In the present study, high feather pecking (HFP) and low feather pecking (LFP) birds were used to investigate if the lines differ in their willingness to work for food or feathers in the presence of freely available identical substrates. Twenty HFP birds and 20 LFP birds were used for the present study and tested in …
Feather pecking, commonly found in flocks of laying hens (Gallus gallus), is detrimental to bird welfare. Thought to cause this problem is the normal housing of layers without a floor substrate. Some evidence suggests that early substrate access decreases later feather pecking. However, there has been little research on the immediate effects of a change …
Injurious pecking has serious welfare consequences in flocks of hens kept for egg laying, especially when loose-housed. Frequent diet change is a significant risk for injurious pecking; how the mechanics of diet change influence pecking behavior is unknown. This study investigated the effect of diet change on the behavior of chicks from a laying strain. …
Feather pecking in laying hens is an important issue in animal welfare. Four studies in laying hens were selected which investigated increased or reduced pecking behaviour using direct or indirect measures of feather pecking behaviour. Direct comparison of the selected experiments is difficult, as the selection criteria and even the selection procedures varied. Keeping these …
Feather pecking is one of the most obvious welfare problems in laying hens. It is seen in all types of housing systems. Although banned in some countries, beak trimming is generally used to reduce the damage caused by this behaviour. In organic farming, where beak trimming is prohibited, the animals are being kept in a …
Selective breeding against feather pecking in laying hens depends on identification of individual birds with the lowest feather pecking activity. If certain behavioural traits are phenotypically and genetically associated with, or predictive of, feather pecking activity then tests for these traits may offer a quicker method of identifying suitable parent birds. In a previous study, …
Social preferences of familiar over unfamiliar social stimuli in chicks may be used to measure sociality, a characteristic important for the welfare of poultry in commercial production. We studied social preferences and reaction to strangers in young White Leghorns and red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) in 3 tests. All chicks were raised and housed in …
Measurements of the heterophil:lymphocyte (H/L) ratio (invasive technique) and corticosterone in yolk and albumen (noninvasive techniques) were used to measure stress in 3 commercial laying strains, Lohmann White (LW), H&N White (HN), Lohmann Brown (LB), and a noncommercial cross (CR) between Rhode Island Red (male) and Barred Plymouth Rock (female), kept in conventional cages or …
Stress responses in laying hens were mediated by continuous infusion of adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) via osmotic pumps. The ACTH was dissolved in saline solution (0.85%), and each pump delivered 8 IU of ACTH per kilogram of BW per day at the rate of 1 uL/h for 7 d. Control hens received pumps loaded with saline. Measurements …
Fear can be a damaging stressor, resulting in impaired animal welfare and poor production economy. Often fear reactions are elicited in situations that are in some way related to predator defence. As males have a guarding role, mixing the sexes might be a way of reducing fear in large groups of laying hens. Tonic immobility …
Domestication and selection for high production have selected animals with less energy-demanding behaviour. In the natural environment of the ancestors, fitness (reproductive success) is often favoured by an ability to locate and remember food sites, whereas in captivity, fitness may be more related to the ability to grow and reproduce efficiently under stable food conditions. …
Fear is now widely regarded as an undesirable state of suffering by many members of the public, the scientific community, welfare and policy groups, as well as by a growing number of farmers. At first glance this view appears to be inconsistent with one based on biological significance, in which fear is regarded as an …
1. Over twelve 28-d laying periods (almost one year), 272 laying hens of the Lohmann Silver strain, individually tagged with transponders, were monitored on their ranging behaviour and laying performance in an aviary system with an adjacent winter garden. 2. From laying periods 1 to 12, the daily frequency of passages between the barn and …
Tests assessing the fear of humans by measuring avoidance or approach reactions of the test animals towards humans can be useful tools in welfare assessment schemes. In this study, we wanted to compare tests assessing the reactions of laying hens towards humans in the home environment to a test performed in a novel environment. As …