The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has estimated that 87% of transported poultry is broiler chickens. Broiler death losses during transport average 0.2% but can vary greatly. In layers, poor feather cover is associated with more mortalities, and in broilers, poor...

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has estimated that 87% of transported poultry is broiler chickens. Broiler death losses during transport average 0.2% but can vary greatly. In layers, low feather cover is associated with more mortalities and in broilers, poor health ...

This chapter discusses the normal and abnormal behaviours and fearfulness of broilers and their welfare implications.

This chapter reviews on the systems of housing, catching, handling and transport of different poultry animals. Highlight of the review focused on the animal welfare aspects such as proper training of farm personnel in handling birds more efficiently and humanely as possible. Topics also discussed...

This book discusses the scientific basis for the measurement and auditing of the welfare of broilers for meat production. It is divided into three parts, where Part 1 presents the ways in which the birds can serve as indicators of welfare, Part 2 examines some of the more important aspects the...

This chapter presents the effect of artificial light environments (light levels, colour, photoperiod and flicker) on the welfare of broilers in terms of vision, behaviour, lameness and mortality.

Air hygiene in a broiler house is poor by comparison with the quality of air experienced by a chicken outdoors. It is remarkable that the modern broiler chicken tolerates the high burden of aerial pollutants, and yet there are grounds for concern that its welfare may be compromised by chronic...

At present most welfare regulations focus on the control of minimum requirements of space and other environmental factors. It is assumed that welfare (as expressed by behavioural, morphological and physiological indicators) will not be compromised when the maximum stocking density is not exceeded....

Modern broiler production systems involve the intensive rearing of large numbers of birds on geographically dispersed sites and their subsequent harvesting/catching at slaughter weight and transport on purpose-built vehicles to centralized processing plants. Both catching and transport represent...

The slaughter and processing of poultry based on an electrical waterbath stunning system and the effects on carcass and meat quality are discussed in this chapter.