{"id":2597,"date":"2020-11-08T18:14:50","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T08:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=2597"},"modified":"2020-11-11T18:17:36","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T08:17:36","slug":"abstracts-slow-growing-broilers-are-healthier-and-express-more-behavioural-indicators-of-positive-welfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=2597","title":{"rendered":"Abstracts: Slow-growing broilers are healthier and express more behavioural indicators of positive welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"Broiler chicken welfare is under increasing scrutiny due to welfare concerns regarding growth rate and stocking density.\r\n\r\nThis farm-based study explored broiler welfare in four conditions representing commercial systems varying in breed and planned maximum stocking density: (1) Breed A, 30 kg\/m2; (2) Breed B, 30 kg\/m2; (3) Breed B, 34 kg\/m2; (4) Breed C, 34 kg\/m2. \r\n\r\nBreeds A and B were ‘slow-growing’ breeds (< 50 g\/day), and Breed C was a widely used ‘fast-growing’ breed. Indicators of negative welfare, behavioural indicators of positive welfare and environmental outcomes were assessed.\r\n\r\nClear differences between conditions were detected. Birds in Condition 4 experienced the poorest health (highest mortality and post-mortem inspection rejections, poorest walking ability, most hock burn and pododermatitis) and litter quality.\r\n\r\nThese birds also displayed lower levels of behaviours indicative of positive welfare (enrichment bale occupation, qualitative ‘happy\/active’ scores, play, ground-scratching) than birds in Conditions 1-3.\r\n\r\nThese findings provide farm-based evidence that significant welfare improvement can be achieved by utilising slow-growing breeds. There are suggested welfare benefits of a slightly lower planned maximum stocking density for Breed B and further health benefits of the slowest-growing breed, although these interventions do not offer the same magnitude of welfare improvement as moving away from fast-growing broilers. \r\n\r\nThe study is from FAI Farms, Northfield Farm, Wytham, UK; Division of Food Animal Science, Bristol Veterinary School, University of Bristol, Langford, UK; Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences, and Faculty of Biosciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, \u00c5s, Norway.\r\n\r\nAnn C Rayner , Ruth C Newberry , Judit Vas, Siobhan Mullan. Sci Rep<\/em> 2020; 10(1):15151. DOI link<\/a>.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Broiler chicken welfare is under increasing scrutiny due to welfare concerns regarding growth rate and stocking density. This farm-based study explored broiler welfare in four conditions representing commercial systems varying in breed and planned maximum stocking density: (1) Breed A, 30 kg\/m2; (2) Breed B, 30 kg\/m2; (3) Breed B, 34 kg\/m2; (4) Breed C, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,940,939,384,503,2040,2039,152],"class_list":["post-2597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abstracts","tag-abstracts-2","tag-broilers","tag-chickens","tag-farming","tag-growth","tag-growth-rates","tag-pododermatitis","tag-welfare"],"rise-blocks_total_comments":0,"rise-blocks_categories":[{"term_id":3,"name":"Abstracts","slug":"abstracts","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":237,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":237,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Abstracts","category_nicename":"abstracts","category_parent":0}],"rise-blocks_excerpt":"Broiler chicken welfare is under increasing scrutiny due to welfare concerns regarding growth rate and stocking density. This farm-based study explored broiler welfare in four conditions representing commercial systems varying in breed and planned maximum stocking density: (1) Breed A, 30 kg\/m2; (2) Breed B, 30 kg\/m2; (3) Breed B, 34 kg\/m2; (4) Breed C, 34 kg\/m2.","blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"3":{"name":"Abstracts","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?cat=3"}},"tags_names":{"54":{"name":"abstracts","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=abstracts-2"},"940":{"name":"broilers","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=broilers"},"939":{"name":"chickens","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=chickens"},"384":{"name":"farming","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=farming"},"503":{"name":"growth","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=growth"},"2040":{"name":"growth rates","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=growth-rates"},"2039":{"name":"pododermatitis","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=pododermatitis"},"152":{"name":"welfare","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=welfare"}},"comments_number":"0","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2598,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597\/revisions\/2598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}