The move to cage-free egg production has spawned a new generation of aviary systems available for hen housing. The question now is how well the new systems perform when balancing egg production and profitability with bird welfare.
By Bruce Stewart-Brown, DVM, DACPV
Chief Science Officer
Perdue Farms
Lighting has emerged as one of the most powerful tools to manage and optimize layer performance. It profoundly impacts production, health and overall welfare.
Enrichment improves the environment of an animal, to meet their behavioral needs and ultimately improve their welfare. Although the research related to enrichments for broiler breeders is sparse, there are several different types of enrichments that have been shown to be beneficial. In this article, Marcela Quino and Bethany Baker-Cook, PhD, Auburn University describe a few of these enrichments that are particularly effective for broiler breeders.
Litter and its management are an essential part of bird management and ensuring bird welfare. Dr. Bethany Baker-Cook discusses the importance of managing litter properly throughout the production cycle.
By Nathan Griffith, BS
Graduate student, Animal Welfare/Behavior
Purdue University
Blue light reduces fear and stress in birds while also improving their vision yet it does not appear to significantly affect production parameters, according to researchers. But will farmers be interested in using blue light?
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming widely used across various fields and could be a transformative tool for enhancing poultry management practices.
Human-animal interaction is the mutual and dynamic relationship between a human and an animal where the animal perceives human interaction as degree of relatedness or distance and vice-versa. Human beings have domesticated poultry species for eggs and meat production. However, fearfulness as a trait still persists and domestic animals often perceive human encounters as fearful.
With the recent rise in the use of slow-growing lines for pasture-based and free-range broiler production, worm infestations could become a significant issue. Warmer weather also contributes to the rise in worm populations, as moisture and humidity create favorable conditions for parasite eggs to thrive, explains Prafulla Regmi, PhD, University of Georgia.
Varying periods of light and dark can affect turkeys’ health and well-being, including their eye health, level of fearfulness and mortality, according to a study led by Allison Pullin, PhD, animal welfare professor at North Carolina State University.
Dustbathing occurs in all commercial chicken housing housing systems, even in caged systems with no substrate. But why do chickens dustbathe?
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