Petelle2

Tracking chicks to understand individual movement phenotypes and their corresponding welfare outcomes

Tracking chicks to understand individual movement phenotypes and their corresponding welfare outcomes

Our research group focuses on the health and welfare of poultry and rabbits as it relates to their housing. To this end, one of the main themes in our research is individual variation in movement and space use within a commercial setting. Our past research shows that individuals are consistent in how they move throughout the aviary, and that individuals are distinctly different from one another. For example, some individuals are very active, moving throughout the different levels of the aviary rapidly throughout the day, while others tend to stay on one level for most of the day. However, we don’t know when distinct individual variation emerges or how it changes across the lifetime of the individual.

With the generous support of the UniBern Forschungsstiftung, we were able to purchase additional radio frequency identification (RFID) antennas to install in our rearing barn to gather positional data of chicks at one day of age. From this data, we will assess whether individuals differ in their space use right after hatch or whether differences develop slowly over the rearing period. We can then link these movement differences with overall health and welfare across their lives.

At present, we have already carried out a pilot study in our experimental barn (Figure 1) that demonstrates we are able to obtain data from chicks and that movement between chicks across the first weeks seem to be consistently different, however our validation is ongoing. We also recently installed antennas in two pens in our rearing barn and started tracking 600 chicks (300/pen) to determine movement differences in a commercial setting (Figure 2).

Drs. Michael Toscano and Matthew Petelle

ZTHZ – Center for Proper Housing: Poultry and Rabbits

VPHI – Veterinary Public Health Insitute

 

Figure 1: Fifteen chicks in one of our pilot pens. Each chick is outfitted with and RFID wing tag to monitor their location within the pen.

Figure 2: One day old chick with RFID tag in commercial rearing pen.  Antennas are under the brown chick paper. 

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