Abstract
A proof of concept applying wildlife ecology techniques to animal welfare science in intensive agricultural environments was conducted using non-cage laying hens. Studies of wildlife ecology regularly use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to assess wild animal movement and behavior within environments with relatively unlimited space and finite resources. However, rather than depicting landscapes, a GIS could be developed in animal production environments to provide insight into animal behavior as an indicator of animal welfare. We developed a GIS-based approach for studying agricultural animal behavior in an environment with finite space and unlimited resources. Concurrent data from wireless body-worn location tracking sensor and video-recording systems, which depicted spatially-explicit behavior of hens (135 hens/room) in two identical indoor enclosures, were collected. The spatial configuration of specific hen behaviors, variation in home range patterns, and variation in home range overlap show that individual hens respond to the same environment differently. Such information could catalyze management practice adjustments (e.g., modifying feeder design and/or location). Genetically-similar hens exhibited diverse behavioral and spatial patterns via a proof of concept approach enabling detailed examinations of individual non-cage laying hen behavior and welfare.
Highlights
Many of the fundamental concepts of animal welfare derive from efforts to understand the response of individual animals to prevailing circumstances, and most theories of welfare emphasize a holistic representation of the animal’s experience that encompasses such elements as emotional state, physical health, and ability to perform natural behaviors
We provide the first characterization of individual hen home ranges in a non-cage environment and the first illustration of spatiotemporal variability in individual hen behavior
We focused our assessment on feeding, foraging, and preening behaviors which can be associated with physical health, natural behavior expression and emotional state
Summary
Many of the fundamental concepts of animal welfare derive from efforts to understand the response of individual animals to prevailing circumstances, and most theories of welfare emphasize a holistic representation of the animal’s experience that encompasses such elements as emotional state, physical health, and ability to perform natural behaviors. Individual animals alone, not aggregated groups of animals, experience the characteristics that make welfare better or worse, such as emotional states and health. Welfare assessments that include behavioral measures require lengthy observation periods, which are often impractical. Because of these considerations, animal welfare tends to be assessed at an aggregate level and behavioral measures are often employed in a limited or indirect fashion. By using the average condition, researchers may be ignoring those individuals in very poor or very good welfare condition Combined, these issues highlight the need to develop a method for gathering behavioral information at the level of the individual and interpreting the meaning of this behavior with regard to the welfare of the animal
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