Abstract
The US egg industry is progressively adopting alternative housing systems for laying hens. Provision of nesting places accommodates natural behaviors and may improve the welfare of the laying hen. However, some fundamental questions remain about nesting behaviors of hens under different housing conditions, which would impact system design and management. For instance, how long does a hen use nest per day for egg laying or nest exploration? How many hens nest simultaneously? In such schemes, information on hens’ behavioral and production responses of hens remains relatively sparse. The primary objective of this work was to demonstrate that RFID technology can be used to continuously quantify dynamic nesting behaviors of individual laying hens in a 60-hen enriched colony housing (ECH). Results show that hens spent on average 63.7±1.4 min (mean±SE) in the nest box and made 23.4±0.7 nest visits during a 16 h daily light period. Time spent in and visits to the nest box during the 6 h laying period accounted for 56% and 45% of the light-period value, respectively. Maximum nest occupancy was 29.0%±0.4%. Three distinct phases of egg production in nest boxes were observed: initial (1.5 h), peak (3.2 h, egg laying rate of 0.24±0.01 eggs/min), and late (1.3 h). The majority (95.1%±0.6%) of the daily eggs were laid in the nest box. Considerable variations in nesting behavior among individual hens and day-to-day variations for a given hen were observed. The RFID system will enable researchers to examine the impacts of resource allocations on nesting behaviors of laying hens in alternative hen housing. Keywords: animal welfare, egg production, RFID, alternative hen housing, individual behaviors DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe.20191206.5129 Citation: Oliveira J L, Xin H W, Wang K L, Zhao Y. Evaluation of nesting behavior of individual laying hens in an enriched colony housing by using RFID technology. Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2019; 12(6): 7–15.
Highlights
The productivity of laying hens has improved considerably over the past 60-70 years because of the advancement in dietary nutrition, genetics, disease prevention, controlled production environment, and husbandry equipment
The RFID system will enable researchers to examine the impacts of resource allocations on nesting behaviors of laying hens in alternative hen housing
3.1 Daily time spent in the nest box (TS) There was no evidence of time effect on TS for the light period (F1,170.9 = 0.85, p = 0.32) or laying period (F1,179.8 = 2.29, p = 0.13)
Summary
The productivity of laying hens has improved considerably over the past 60-70 years because of the advancement in dietary nutrition, genetics, disease prevention, controlled production environment, and husbandry equipment. Considering that laying hens have strong nesting motivation as a behavioral need[7,8], enriched colony housing (ECH) systems have been developed to accommodate such behavior, thereby improving animal welfare, by providing enclosures such as plastic curtains and turf mat surface in nest boxes[8,9,10,11]. Nesting is one of the important behaviors that has been retained during the hen’s domestication[12,13] It consists of the exploration of nest places followed by sitting (the period when the hen sits and actively prepares for the egg laying), known as pre-laying behavior, and subsequent oviposition[14]. How does nesting time of the same hen change from one day to the next? How long do hens use nest box each day? How many hens simultaneously occupy the nest box? Answers to these questions would help to understand nesting behavior of hens and their interactions under certain physical conditions, which will be conducive to housing system design to accommodate the biological needs of hens while maximizing utilization of the resources
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