So how can we assess welfare in our chickens? Well we can use both behavioral and physiological indices to do this. And with me today, I've got Barry Thorp from St. David's Poultry Veterinary Group, and he's a veterinarian that specializes in poultry. >> So Vicky, can you tell me how you assess welfare, and then I'll tell you what I would be doing. >> Okay. So if I was going to use behavioral indices to assess welfare, I would try and think of both what I would expect to be normal and what I would expect to be abnormal. So if I think about feeding and drinking behavior, normal behavior for chickens would be that they're eating the right amount of diet for their stage of production and their age, they're drinking the right amount of water, which is usually about double their feed intake. Abnormal feeding and drinking behavior would be a sudden decrease in feed intake, that I couldn't explain by say, for example, a change in feed type, which often depresses feed intake for a short while or, say, a hen going broody, which decreases her feed intake. Other kinds of behaviors I might see is if I look for movement for example, so normal movement behavior would be that the chickens move away from me quite easily and without any kind of limping, they're not stiff. Often, for abnormal movement, you might expect animals, perhaps, to be limping or not moving until the last minute if there's something wrong with them. I would also think about their body posture. Normal behavior in chickens is they're, they're generally upright and alert; if they're showing abnormal posture, then they might be hunched and fluffed up, and kind of tucking their, their head into their neck, and that's a clear sign that something probably isn't right. Vocalization is also a good one: if you keep chickens, then you're probably familiar with what is normal for your flock, a kind of gentle chattering, I like to think of it as. Whereas if there's something wrong or disturbing the flock, then interestingly you might get one of two extremes, you might get the birds being extremely quiet or showing 'hysteria' if you like. And finally, I'd also use looking at social behavior of chickens, so normal social behavior would generally be that you would see chickens being part of the flock and tending to stick together. However, if the bird is separating itself from the flock, without an obvious reason such as egg-laying, then it might give you some cause for concern. What about you? What kind of measures would you use? >> Really fairly similarly actually. We're not, I find it very hard to differentiate assessing a flock similarly for welfare and assessing it for, for health and welfare, I tend to tie them both together. And what I do is, I visit the, visit the poultry house, the first thing I want is a bit of information, I'm looking for information, the same as you, about feed consumption, water consumption, is that following expectations, is it dropped, whatever, then I'd like to know what the body weight of the birds is like? I'd like to know what time the lights go on in the morning, what time they go off in the evening, the general pattern, and then any changes in that pattern. Then I would te, tend to go in to look at the birds. Initially, I would just go through the door, into the house, and just observe them, don't disturb them at all. What are the birds doing? Are they moving around the house? Are there some birds that are sitting hunched up on perches, may be don't look very happy. Are the birds behaving aggressively to each other? Are they being quiet? What they're up to really? And gradually build up that assessment, and the next stage really is actually to start walking through the house, looking at the litter. Picking up the odd bird and examining it. What's its body weight like? What's its body condition like? Is it lighter than expected? Do the bones really easily felt? That kind of thing. Looking at its eyes, its nose, see if there's any discharges. What color is the comb? Is it a nice bright red color? So a lot of this pertains to health, but it, it also may indicate as welfare issues too. Feathering, very important to look at feathering, is the bird properly feathered? What are those feathers like, are they shiny, are they dull, are they broken? That kind of thing. That gradually builds up a picture of the flock. While you're listening to the flock as well, you might hear some coughing, which again, is an indicator of, of disease in that flock. >> So what does a chicken cough sound like? >> Well, it depends what disease they've got, but there's one called ILT which is infection of the and there they get a kind of sheet of membrane, actually almost blocks the trachea, and then they have a really good cough, as they try to clear it, sort of [COUGH]. But the best time to, to hear birds coughing or to hear sounds is to go up when it's dark. Fans are switched off, the birds are quiet for the night, they're not making those background noises, Then if you've got a few individual birds in that house that are coughing, you can hear them quite clearly. >> So, that gives you a general picture of how you would assess welfare in poultry using both behavioral and physiological indices, the complication comes is that if birds cannot alleviate these stressors in their environment that are causing the welfare problems, then it can lead onto long-term problems such as frustration, stereotypic behavior, learned helplessness and depression.
