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Chicken Behaviour and Welfare

368 ratings

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The University of Edinburgh

Chicken Behaviour and Welfare

368 ratings

This course explains the general principles of chicken behaviour and welfare, and the behavioural and physiological indicators that can be used to assess welfare in chickens kept in hobby flocks through to commercial farms. The focus is primarily on laying hens and meat chickens (broilers) although many of the principles are relevant to other types of poultry. The course is likely to be of interest to people who own chickens as pets or keep a small hobby flock, commercial egg and chicken meat producers, veterinarians and vet nurses. Learning Objectives: at the end of this course, you will be able to - - Describe avian sensory perception and motivation - Explain the main behaviour patterns of poultry - Define welfare and explain the bases of welfare standards - Assess chicken welfare, using behavioural and physiological means - Understand common welfare problems of chickens This course is taught by staff from Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), University of Glasgow, and St David's Poultry Team. You can follow us on Twitter! #chickenmooc © University of Edinburgh and Scotland's Rural College 2016 CC BY

From the lesson

Introduction to Animal Behaviour: Domestication, Behaviour Development and Learning, the Senses

Welcome to the first week of the Chicken Behaviour and Welfare Course. If you haven't seen it - watch the video which introduces you to the course: you can find it under "Getting Started; Welcome!" During this lesson, we will consider what makes a domestic animal, how behaviour develops in the chicken from before hatching and beyond, different types of learning and the senses - vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

Smell and Touch2:19

Meet the Instructors

Dr Victoria Sandilands
Senior scientist
Avian Science Research Centre, SRUC

We're now going to look at the ways in which chickens get information about their

environment, which then governs their behavior.

The parts of the brain that control particular senses are more developed where

those senses are acute.

For example, sight and vision in night predators, such as owls,

is a keen sense in those birds, so this part of the brain is well-developed.

In chickens, vision and sight are also well-developed.

Chickens have panoramic vision of about 300 degrees and binocular vision,

which is where the visual input from both eyes overlaps, of about 26 degrees.

This means that there is only a small area behind them where they cannot see, which is

a very valuable skill if you need to worry about predators sneaking up on you.

Chickens and

other birds can also see colors as well as in shades of gray, such as in dim light.

Indeed, birds have, at a minimum,

double the sensitive visual cells on the back of the retina compared to humans.

Chickens seem better at distinguishing bright colors such as red and

orange rather than more muted colors.

This may be an evolutionary adaptation to forest dwelling in their ancestors.

Because these bright colors would be easiest to see against a green background

as with a forest.

Chickens also have a wider sensitivity to light spectrum than people.

You and I can see in what's known as the visible light spectrum,

which is about 400 to 700 nanometers wavelengths of energy.

But chickens can also see below 400 nanometers

in what's known as the ultraviolet spectrum.

So what might look like a plain white cockerel to you and I

might be patterned to other chickens and can affect their behavior.

For example, this might attracts pecking from other birds.

Vision is very important in chickens because they use it to

communicate a great deal of information.

For example, body postures and displays are used to signal both threats and

submissions.

All those fancy feathers that you see on the males are for

a good reason, to display to other males as challengers and to females as mates,

their superior ability to dedicate resources to growing a fancy plumage.

So they either say, "don't mess with me,

I'm really fit and healthy".

Or they say, "I'd make a great mate".

Comb size and comb color in chickens also impart

information about sexual maturity, social status, and fitness to other birds.

Vision is also important in depth perception, for example, for

jumping to perches, for food recognition and

grasping, for recognizing friends and enemies,

to identify social signals, and

thus maintain a stable hierarchy, in other words, the pecking order, and

to identify suitable foraging, nesting, dust bathing and roosting sites.

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