High-throughput phenotyping to characterise range use behaviour in broiler chickens

Area of Science:

• Animal Behaviour and Welfare
• Precision Livestock Farming
• Poultry Science

Background:

• Free-range chicken farming emphasizes outdoor access, but individual range use varies.
• Traditional methods for assessing range use are time-consuming and provide incomplete data.
• Passive RFID systems offer limited insights into individual chicken movements.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel method for accurately measuring individual broiler range use behavior.
• To assess range use patterns across different breeds in outdoor production systems.
• To identify reliable indicators of individual variation in range utilization.

Main Methods:

• Utilized an active RFID system to track 600 broilers across three breeds every 30 seconds in barns and nine outdoor zones.
• Quantified five daily range use measures: barn time, outdoor accesses, zones visited, gregariousness, and zone changes.
• Applied Principal Component Analyses (PCAs) to derive synthetic indicators of range use behavior.

Main Results:

• Two principal components (PC1 and PC2) explained over 90% of the variance in range use measures, showing consistency over time and correlation with visual scans.
• PC1 reflected barn time and zone changes, while PC2 indicated range exploration.
• Range use increased with age and outdoor temperature, with no sex differences, and demonstrated individual repeatability, particularly for PC1.

Conclusions:

• The active RFID method provides reliable and repeatable indicators for characterizing broiler range use at an individual level.
• These novel tools facilitate a deeper understanding of individual variations in range use within free-range farming systems.
• The findings support the development of improved welfare and management strategies in free-range poultry production.