Campus Units
Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
2016
DOI
10.13031/aim.20162456546
Conference Title
2016 ASABE Annual International Meeting
Conference Date
July 17–20, 2016
City
Orlando, FL, United States
Abstract
Alternative housing systems for laying hens are increasingly adopted by the US egg industry. However, information still lacks with regards to behavioral and production responses of the hens to resources allocation in such alternative housing systems. The objective of this study was to characterize the nesting behavior and the location of eggs laid in an enriched colony housing (ECH) system. The experiment was conducted in laboratory scale, involving an ECH commercial module with the capacity of 60 hens per colony. The nesting behaviors were evaluated using an ultra-high frequency radio-frequency identification (UHF RFID) system that consists of four antennas located inside the nest box, one reader, and 60 individual transponders (one per bird) attached to the hen legs. The following behaviors were quantified: time spent in the nest box, maximum number of hen occupancy, oviposition time and place, daily number of visits to the nest box, and number of visits per egg laid in the nest box. Preliminary results to date show that laying hens in the ECH spent on average 56 (±5) (mean ±SE) minutes inside nest box during laying or exploring visits and made an average of 17.8 (±1.4) visits per day. The number of visits per egg laid in the nest box was 21.3 (±0.6). The maximum occupancy averaged 11.0 (±0.5) birds, which occurred within 5-6 hours after the light was turned on. Most of the daily eggs (92.7 ±1.5%) were laid in the nest box, while 4.4 (±1.1) % eggs were laid in the scratch area, and 2.9 (±0.4) % in the perches area. Data collection and analysis is continuing. Information derived from this study is expected to provide insight into better design of nest box for laying hens.
Copyright Owner
American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers
Copyright Date
2016
Language
eb
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Oliveira, Jofran; Xin, Hongwei; Zhao, Yang; Li, Lihua; Liu, Kai; and Glaess, Kaesey, "Nesting Behaviors and Egg Production Pattern of Laying Hens in Enriched Colony Housing" (2016). Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Conference Proceedings and Presentations. 487.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/abe_eng_conf/487
Included in
Agriculture Commons, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Commons, Poultry or Avian Science Commons
Comments
This paper is from 2016 ASABE Annual International Meeting, Paper No. 162456546, pages 1-8 (doi: 10.13031/aim.20162456546). St. Joseph, Mich.: ASABE. Posted with permission.