Broilers do not spread evenly across their environment. Some may cluster near a wall, equipment line, or other boundary, while other areas appear relatively unoccupied. Shawna Weimer, PhD, University of Arkansas, explores the behavior of wall hugging and what it means to broiler production.
Chickens are highly motivated to peck, forage, and explore their environment. Providing opportunities for birds to express these motivated behaviors, is a key component of animal welfare, and edible enrichments can be an effective way to encourage engagement with the environment.
In nature, fear protects animals from danger. In commercial settings, domestic laying hens are shielded from most fear-inducing stimuli, such as predators and unfamiliar situations. Therefore, fear serves as an aversive experience for the hens themselves and leads to undesired behaviors for producers.
In the United States, the majority of laying hens are housed in conventional cages. However, there has been a shift towards cage-free systems. Cage-free systems can benefit laying hen welfare. Birds have opportunities to perform a full range of species-specific behaviors, including foraging, dustbathing, perching, and walking, which are restricted in conventional cages.
Boredom may be a welfare concern for poultry that are raised in barren conditions. However, researchers have conducted few investigations into this emotional state. Approaches to detect boredom in other species may provide practical methods for quantifying boredom in poultry.
Artificial light remains the industry standard in modern broiler production because it is highly controllable and can provide a consistent, uniform light source. While some studies demonstrate the benefits of artificial lighting, other research suggests that the same environment may negatively affect ocular and leg health.
Broiler welfare assessment has moved beyond a framework based solely on minimizing harm to one that incorporates opportunities for positive affect. Jenna Boewe, graduate student, and Marisa Erasmus, PhD, Purdue University, explore this new paradigm in animal welfare as it applies to today's broilers.
Lameness in poultry, characterized by impaired mobility or abnormal gait, is a major concern in fast-growing birds such as broilers and turkeys. Intensive genetic selection for rapid body weight gain and increased breast muscle mass can result in disproportionate growth between the muscular and skeletal systems, predisposing birds to locomotor problems. Stephanie Kulbacki, University of Georgia, provides an overview of lameness and ways to assess gait.
Extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts, freezing conditions, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes, can affect poultry flocks in many ways. The severity of their impact depends on both the type of event and the geographic location.
Japanese quail (Corturnix corturnix japonica) are the smallest farmed birds and contribute to approximately 10% and 0.2% of the global table egg and meat markets. Rosie Whittle, PhD, discusses housing, management and key welfare issues associated with farming these birds.
Currently, 38.7% of laying hen housing systems in the United States are cage-free and this transition continues to increase. However, little attention has been given to pullet housing systems. In this article, Richard Blatchford, PhD, University of California, Davis, provides important considerations for pullet management.
Allison Pullin, PhD, North Carolina State University explores how tracking a portion of individual animals in research and commercial poultry flocks offers insight to improve management practices and animal welfare.
As animal welfare science has evolved, the importance of using animal-based measures to study welfare has become apparent. Birds may have needs and feelings that aren’t immediately obvious to humans, and their priorities are influenced by an evolutionary history that is vastly different than our own.
For every laying hen that is hatched, approximately one male counterpart also hatches. However, as roosters do not produce eggs, they are typically culled, or euthanized, at hatch. However, the culling of these day-old male chicks raises ethical concerns.
Feed is a vital part of the poultry industry, representing around 60-70% of the total costs. However, even the best feed formulation cannot deliver results if the birds cannot access it readily. Anusha Gautam and Bethany Baker-Cook, PhD, Auburn University, discuss the right type of feeders to select for each of the production phases, appropriate feeder spacing, proper feeder height, and the overall feeder arrangement.
Beak trimming is common in the management of laying hens, involving the removal of a portion of a bird’s beak to minimize harmful behaviors. While beak trimming helps reduce injuries among birds, the technique has also raised animal welfare concerns. Thus, farmers and researchers are continuing to explore ways to manage hens without the need to trim their beaks.
While some mortality is expected in all layer flocks, regardless of the housing type or breed, the rate and causes can vary depending on the production system. Cage-free systems may not inherently have higher mortality than cages and experience in managing birds in cage-free systems plays a big role in maintaining low mortality.
The ancestor of the modern-day chicken, the red jungle fowl, was exposed to different spectra of light in their natural habitat. The surrounding environment, vegetation, season and time of day all affect the color of light exposure to the wild bird, which may have lingering behavioral effects on present-day poultry.
The microbiota found in the guts of chickens is responsible for more than the breakdown of food products. It also impacts immune response, the enteric nervous system and cell function. An imbalance can affect disease resistance, and heighten stress and fear responses.
Once the market weight is achieved in turkeys, they are herded, loaded and transported to slaughter plants for stunning and processing, but these events of known as “live haul” can pose risks to animal welfare throughout the process.
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, describe a few that are particularly effective for broiler breeders.
Stocking density is a key determinant of profits from a broiler operation as revenues per unit of space increase with increasing stocking density. However, overcrowding due to high stocking density can lead to negative behavior and welfare consequences.
The pre-slaughter phase for broiler chickens is a period that contains many stressors and risks for animal welfare. Understanding the factors that can lead to negative welfare outcomes is important to make improvements in broiler chicken welfare during the pre-slaughter phase.
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.
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.
Dustbathing occurs in all commercial chicken housing housing systems, even in caged systems with no substrate. But why do chickens dustbathe?
Housing systems for laying hens in the United States (and more broadly across the world) are transitioning away from conventional cages to cage-free systems.
Anxiety is the most common mental health disorder in people. Chickens may also experience anxiety, but it is difficult to measure and research has been mainly focused on assessing fear. However, we can get insight into their mental state based on observations of behaviors.
Light and dark cycles within a 24-hour period play a crucial role in maintaining physiological and behavioral rhythms in animals.
Drinker management is a key aspect of poultry welfare, as water is a crucial resource involved in thermal regulation, nutrient absorption, digestion, waste elimination and overall homeostatic balance in birds.
Animal welfare audits are performed to evaluate whether a hatchery, farm, or processing plant is meeting the specific animal welfare standards of a certification program.
Damaging behaviors in poultry include feather pecking, vent pecking, and toe pecking. While feather and vent pecking are well-known welfare problems in poultry that have received significant attention from researchers and farmers, toe pecking remains relatively unknown.
Biosecurity is the cheapest, most effective means of disease prevention and control available. Proper biosecurity will help to ensure the overall health and welfare of your flock.
Currently, 34% of laying hens used for commercial egg production in the United States are housed in cage-free environments. This number will nearly double to 66% by 2026 by to meet retailer demands and state legislation requirements. How do we prepare for this increase?
The first few days of life are some of the most important in chicks' lives. During this time, chicks start developing and set themselves up for the rest of their lifetime. The husbandry decisions made at this point can impact the birds' growth, development, health and welfare.
Various claims and labels on the products provide consumers with information about how the animals were raised and treated during production. However, the information on animal products can sometimes be confusing.
The incubation environment is important for embryonic development and programs chick welfare. The focus of this newsletter is on the effects of the incubator environment on chicken egg incubation, but the same principles can apply to other poultry species.
Tryptophan is an essential amino acid, which is the building block of protein, therefore it cannot be synthesized by the body itself and must be obtained through food; it is important for many metabolic functions. A tryptophan deficiency could affect behavioral responses to stress in poultry.
The consequences of cold stress can be severe, leading to death in extreme cases. A chicken's susceptibility to cold stress depends on various factors, including the chicken's breed, age, body size, amount of feather coverage and condition of the feathers and nutritional status.
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