Providing environmental enrichments that increase environmental complexity can benefit poultry welfare. This Poultry Science Association symposium paper is structured around four themes on (1) poultry preferences and affective states (2) species-specific behavior, including play behavior and the...

Resilience, the capacity of animals to be minimally affected by a disturbance or to rapidly bounce back to the state before the challenge, may be improved by enrichment, but negatively impacted by a high allostatic load from stressful management procedures in pigs. We investigated the combined...

The environmental complexity, both during early and adult life, contributes to shaping individuals' fearfulness. The present study aimed at testing whether hens reared in an aviary were less fearful than hens reared in cages, and whether provision of additional enrichment during the laying phase...

The use of insect live larvae as environmental enrichment has recently been proposed in broiler chickens, but the concomitant administration of black soldier fly (BSF) and yellow mealworm (YM) has never been tested yet. Therefore, the present study aims to evaluate the effects of live BSF and YM...

This article focuses on the application of the IBA 2.0 system (Index of Welfare of Livestock), developed by the CRPA of Reggio Emilia for the evaluation of the welfare of pigs, in 10 pig farms in Emilia, with the aim of collecting data relating to some welfare indicators of the Italian heavy pig...

The evolution of scientific knowledge regarding animal sentience, together with the growing concerns of consumers regarding current production models, has brought with it the responsibility of reviewing many practices carried out in industrial swine farming, with the purpose of improving the life...

The objective of this study was to describe the ontogeny of the severe feather pecking (SFP), gentle feather pecking (GFP), aggressive pecking (AP), and enrichment pecking (EP) of non-beak-trimmed Lohmann Brown (LB)-pullets during the first 4 weeks of life (observation on 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, and...

The study evaluated the effect of environmental enrichment (EE) during gestation of primiparous and multiparous sows on the concentrations of cortisol, behavior at farrowing, and production parameters of sows and their piglets. Primiparous (n = 20) and multiparous (n = 20) sows were included. Half...

Finishing entire male pigs after puberty is not common in Europe due to aggression and boar taint. Alternatives to surgical castration or immunocastration should be explored as the production of entire males can also increase the productivity and sustainability of swine production. This study...

Improving welfare is still a critical issue in pig husbandry. Upgrades of the housing environment seem to be a promising solution to optimise resilience as a whole, and therefore improve animal welfare. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of an alternative housing system to...