Hinkle, 1999 – California Caged Layer Pest Management Evaluation
California caged-layer poultry producers were surveyed regarding current pest management practises for insects, mites, weeds, pathogens, rodents, and other vertebrate …
California caged-layer poultry producers were surveyed regarding current pest management practises for insects, mites, weeds, pathogens, rodents, and other vertebrate …
1. Management practices, stocking rate and flock size may affect laying hen welfare but there have been few replicated studies in commercial non-cage systems that investigate this. This study used a broad range of physical and physiological indicators to assess the welfare of hens in 36 commercial flocks. 2. Six laying period treatments were examined …
Although the transition from cage housing to alternative systems commenced more than 20 yr ago, there is still an ongoing …
Plumage condition, use of outdoor run, mortality and productivity were recorded in 18 Danish commercial organic egg-producing flocks consisting of 1,200-5,000 hens each. Between 7 and 38% of the hens in a flock used the outdoor run, with a mean of 18%. In most flocks the majority of the hens outside stayed close to the …
1. A leg band containing a transponder was fitted to 80 birds in a perchery containing 1000 birds. 2. The transponder emitted a unique identification number when a bird walked on one of 8 flat antennae on the floor. The recording apparatus was used to measure the amount of time that each of the tagged …
Many studies have shown how laying aviaries can improve hens’ welfare, but little work has been done on the adaptation …
Abstract 1. ISA Brown laying hens (3000) were housed in a perchery in 10 pens, each with 300 birds. The …
1. Flocks of medium hybrid laying hens were housed in a modified deep litter system; the house was divided into 2, 3 and 4 pens in three successive years. Flock size was 300 or 370 and stocking density varied from 3.4 to 10.7 birds/m2. Higher densities used were above those recommended by the Ministry of …
Laying Hens were kept in an aviary system on a practical scale under Swedish conditions during five entire production cycles. …
In the near future EU-legislation will ban the use of conventional battery cages, while national legislation in some countries in Western Europe will ban beak trimming as well. The ban on battery cages and beak trimming causes an increased risk of feather pecking and cannibalism in laying hens. Many factors influence feather pecking behaviour, but this paper …
Adult laying hens from Rhode Island Red (RIR) origin both express lower levels of feather pecking and lower fear responses towards a novel object than laying hens from White Leghorn (WL) origin. The present study investigated whether mixed housing of RIR and WL laying hens would affect their behaviour in both an open field (at …
Variance components and selection response for feather pecking behavior were studied by analyzing the data from a divergent selection experiment. An investigation indicated that a Box-Cox transformation with power λ = −0.2 made the data approximately normally distributed and gave the best fit for the model. Variance components and selection response were estimated using Bayesian …
1. The objective of the present study was to examine the behaviour of laying hens in single-tiered aviaries with and …
This well attended Workshop stimulated lively discussion that continued throughout the Conference. It addressed a behavioural problem in laying fowl that causes concern from both welfare and economic standpoints, particularly in the context of the current trend towards alternative colony housing systems where its consequences tend to be more serious. The Workshop was structured around …
The aim of this review is to discuss the effects of selection method and early-life history on the behavioural development of laying hens. Especially in larger groups, laying hens often develop damaging behaviours, such as feather pecking and cannibalism, leading to impaired animal welfare. We hypothesise that the propensity to develop feather pecking and cannibalism …
Feather pecking is a major problem in laying hens. Frustration, i.e. the omission of expected reward, may play a role in the development of feather pecking. In two experiments, we studied if feather pecking could be facilitated by short-term frustration in birds with a high feather pecking phenotype and victims of feather pecking (experiment 1), …