Various aspects of activity, such as spontaneous activity, explorative activity, activity in openfield tests, and hyperactivity syndrome have been explored as causal factors of feather pecking in laying hens, with no clear results. In all previous studies, mean values of activity over different...

Feather pecking and cannibalism are prominent problems in modern laying hen husbandry. Among the various approaches to address this issue, environmental enrichment plays a crucial role. In this on-farm study, four winter gardens of an organic farm henhouse were equipped with an automatic enrichment ...

Feather pecking (FP) is one of the primary welfare issues in commercial cage-free hen houses as that can seriously reduce the well-being of birds and cause economic losses for egg producers. After beak trimming is highly criticized in Europe and the USA, alternative methods are needed for pecking...

Few studies have assessed fearfulness and how it relates to feather condition and management strategies in end-of-lay hens housed in commercial aviaries. As aviary housing for laying hens grows with the phasing out of cages, there is a need to ensure the currently used methods of assessing on-farm...

The study aimed to investigate the effects of lighting pattern and photoperiod on range use, feather cover and gait score of native laying hens. Six hundred and thirty 19-wks-old Beijing You Chicken (BYC) pullets were randomly allocated to 6 groups with 105 birds each, 3 replicates per group,...

The present investigation was planned to study the welfare and behavior performance of laying hens at two different stocking densities and flock size in conventional California cages. A total of 180 commercial White Leghorn (strain BV 300) layers were divided into four groups with six replicates...

Laying hen farmers increasingly optimize relevant causal complexes to reduce severe feather pecking. Previous studies demonstrated the relevance of the rearing period on plumage condition during the laying period. Therefore, we examined the effects of pullet quality at the time of housing in the...

This proceeding contains 160 abstracts from the Annual Meeting of the German Branch of the World's Poultry Science Association. The topics presented the most challenging questions in the fields of animal welfare, hygiene and health maintenance (including avian influenza), environmental enrichment...

The use of non-cage housing systems for layers is increasing in Europe and elsewhere. Knowledge of factors that may affect mortality in these systems is important to be able to improve animal welfare, reduce mortality and enhance sustainability. The aim of this study was to investigate factors that ...

Preventing feather pecking (FP) in adult laying hens is important for the welfare of intensively poultry farming. Fear-related behavior in growing female layer chicks may predict FP in adult hens. In this study, in two representative laying breeds (White Leghorn [WL] and Rhode Island Red [RIR])...