Abstract
We sought to objectively quantify and compare the recorded movement and location patterns of laying hens within a commercial system. Using a custom tracking system, we monitored the location within five zones of a commercial aviary for 13 hens within a flock of 225 animals for a contiguous period of 11 days. Most hens manifested a hen-specific pattern that was (visually) highly consistent across days, though, within that consistency, manifested stark differences between hens. Three different methods were used to classify individual daily datasets into groups based on their similarity: (i) Linear Discriminant Analysis based on six summary variables (transitions into each zone) and total transitions; (ii) Hierarchical Clustering, a naïve clustering analysis technique, applied to summary variables and iii) Hierarchical Clustering applied to dissimilarity matrices produced by Dynamic Time Warping. The three methods correctly classified more than 85% of the hen days and provided a unique means to assess behaviour of a system indicating a considerable degree of complexity and structure. We believe the current effort is the first to document these location and movement patterns within a large, complex commercial system with a large potential to influence the assessment of animal welfare, health, and productivity.
Highlights
We sought to objectively quantify and compare the recorded movement and location patterns of laying hens within a commercial system
The six summary variables were initially included as dependent variables, and sequentially dropped and re-entered into the LDA if the model was improved by 5% or more of variance by including that explanatory variable
Movement patterns for four hens over the same consecutive 11 days are provided for comparison (Fig. 2)
Summary
We sought to objectively quantify and compare the recorded movement and location patterns of laying hens within a commercial system. Birds seem to adopt a different social system characterized by decreased acts of aggression[17] How this changing social structure relates to altered movements (e.g. to avoid specific individuals or hoarding and/or use of high value resources) in large commercial settings is unknown. Given the pattern of larger group and total farm size within the poultry sector and agricultural system as a whole, producers must increasingly rely on technological innovation to monitor important variables such as environmental conditions, equipment operations, and characteristics of the animals themselves. One particular use of Precision Livestock Farming is surveillance of individual animals using metrics for physiological variables (e.g., body temperature) as well as movement and location These developments have largely excluded poultry production for several reasons that were previously summarized[20]. The characteristics of housing for poultry complicates individual monitoring as it may involve multiple vertical layers (or even stacked tiers) necessitating tracking in three dimensions
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