Reducing the costly behaviours of feather-pecking and cannibalism in the poultry industry may be as simple as installing a rack of hay above cages or in sheds on litter floors and giving hens "something interesting to do".
A PhD study completed at The University of Queensland by Dr Clare Rudkin has shown feather-pecking and cannibalism to be more to do with the uniformity or sterility of their environment rather than lack of space.
Feather-pecking is when hens peck off and eat each others' feathers while cannibalism occurs when a wound or the vent (cloaca) is pecked at by other hens. Once a wound has been formed, the continual light pecking can result in death within a few hours.
"The idea that lack of space is a major problem to chooks is held by the general public. My thesis showed these behaviours occur because hens are not able to express an innate desire to investigate their surroundings," Dr Rudkin said
"I found a four-fold decrease in feather pecking and no cannibalism when hens were presented with a rack of hay as opposed to the control group which had nothing to distract them. They could pull out a variety of straw and leaf shapes and lengths, investigate them, eat some and discard others.
"My study found that lucerne hay in racks reduced feather-pecking by 80 percent by growing layer chickens in pens and by 90 percent by laying hens in cages, and stopped cannibalism even when beaks were not trimmed. So lucerne hay in racks makes floor housing a practical option.
"Interestingly, my study found that hens used as commercial laying birds when kept in a free range environment spent the same proportion of their time foraging as wild, jungle hens."
Dr Rudkin said hens, like most other animals, were intelligent in the areas important to their survival and easily remembered something already investigated.
"Commercially available ?toys' are too simple and hens prefer the hay in racks as diversions," she said.
For her study through the School of Animal Studies, she built racks and observed behaviours of 1200 growing chickens on the floor in pens and nearly 400 laying hens (200) in cages at the UQ Gatton farm.
For more information, contact Dr Clare Rudkin (telephone 07 3294 7180).
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