Effects of light color and intensity on discrimination of red objects in broilers

Poultry are sensitive to red objects, such as comb and blood on the body surface, likely inducing injurious pecking in flocks. Light is an important factor that affects the pecking behavior of poultry. A wooden box was built to investigate the effects of Light Emitting Diode (LED) light color (warm white and cold white) and intensity (5 and 50 lux) of background light on the discrimination of red objects in broilers. A piece of red photographic paper (Paper 1) was used to simulate a red object and paired with another piece of paper (Paper 2 to 8) with a different color. Bigger number of the paired paper indicated greater color difference. The experiment consisted of three phases: adaptation, training, and test. In the adaptation phase, birds were selected for the adaptation to reduce the stress from the box. In the training phase, birds were trained to discriminate and peck at Paper 1 when paired with Paper 8 under one type of background light. Twenty-three birds were tested when the paired paper was changed from Paper 7 to 2. Each pair of paper included 12 trials for every bird, and response time to peck and proportion of choices of Paper 1 in the last 10 trials were collected. The results showed that broilers tested under 5 lux light had longer response times than broilers tested under 50 lux light (P < 0.05). When Paper 1 was paired with paper 7, broilers tested under warm white light had lower proportion of choices of Paper 1 than those tested under cold white light (P < 0.05). Color difference had a significant effect on response time of broilers (P < 0.05). Moreover, the proportion of choices of Paper 1 decreased to 50% (chance-level performance) when color of the paired paper was gradually similar to Paper 1. Conclusively, rearing broilers in warm white rather than cold white light with appropriate light intensity should be recommended to reduce damaging pecking behavior in broiler production.