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Effects of multiple daily litter applications on the dust bathing behaviour of laying hens kept in an enriched cage system
- Source :
- Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 178:51-59
- Publication Year :
- 2016
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2016.
-
Abstract
- Conventional ‘battery’ cages for laying hens without perches, nests and litter areas have been banned by law throughout the European Union since 1 January 2012. As an alternative solution, enriched cage systems were introduced. Our aim was to investigate how many applications of litter substrate per day are necessary to motivate laying hens to perform dust bathing behaviour, and to what extent the hens use these offered litter areas in a species-appropriate manner. Each of the two consecutive experiments was conducted for 12 months, during which 20 (experiment 1) and 40 (experiment 2) laying hens of the strains Lohmann Selected Leghorn (LSL) and Lohmann Brown Classic (LB) were housed in 10 units of the enriched cage system HÜK 125/80 (2 hens/unit [(experiment 1], 4 hens/unit [experiment 2], same strain per unit). In defined daily application frequencies from one to four times (11:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.) over the laying period, 50g conventional feed per application were applied as litter substrate onto each 925cm2 sized mat. The hens were recorded weekly by digital video systems. Results showed that the mean duration of dust bathing behaviour lasted 05:58min in experiment 1 and 04:59min in experiment 2. Litter application frequency had a significant effect on the dust bathing duration as well in experiment 1 (P
- Subjects :
- Litter (animal)
Veterinary medicine
Dust bath
05 social sciences
Digital video
0402 animal and dairy science
Dust bathing
04 agricultural and veterinary sciences
Biology
040201 dairy & animal science
Laying
Chicken
Animal science
Food Animals
Animal welfare
media_common.cataloged_instance
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Animal Science and Zoology
050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology
European union
Cage
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 01681591
- Volume :
- 178
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Applied Animal Behaviour Science
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....3e94676fc0c40f15399d37ff6acdeb1b
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2016.02.001