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Influences of maternal care on chicken welfare

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Edgar_animals_06_00002_CC.pdf (404.5Kb)
Date
05/01/2016
Author
Edgar, Joanne
Held, Suzanne
Jones, Charlotte
Troisi, Camille
Keywords
Animal welfare
Behaviour
Chicken
Domestic
Hen
Imprinting
Laying
Maternal
Simulation
Social learning
SF Animal culture
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Abstract
In domestic chickens, the provision of maternal care strongly influences the behavioural development of chicks. Mother hens play an important role in directing their chicks' behaviour and are able to buffer their chicks' response to stressors. Chicks imprint upon their mother, who is key in directing the chicks' behaviour and in allowing them to develop food preferences. Chicks reared by a mother hen are less fearful and show higher levels of behavioural synchronisation than chicks reared artificially. In a commercial setting, more fearful chicks with unsynchronised behaviour are more likely to develop behavioural problems, such as feather pecking. As well as being an inherent welfare problem, fear can also lead to panic responses, smothering, and fractured bones. Despite the beneficial effects of brooding, it is not commercially viable to allow natural brooding on farms and so chicks are hatched in large incubators and reared artificially, without a mother hen. In this review we cover the literature demonstrating the important features of maternal care in domestic chickens, the behavioural consequences of deprivation and the welfare implications on commercial farms. We finish by suggesting ways to use research in natural maternal care to improve commercial chick rearing practice.
Citation
Edgar , J , Held , S , Jones , C & Troisi , C 2016 , ' Influences of maternal care on chicken welfare ' , Animals , vol. 6 , no. 1 , 2 . https://doi.org/10.3390/ani6010002
Publication
Animals
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/ani6010002
ISSN
2076-2615
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
This review was funded by a BBSRC Future Leader Fellowship to Joanne Edgar.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/8090

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