Recipient Organization
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV
(N/A)
RALEIGH,NC 27695
Performing Department
Poultry Science
Non Technical Summary
The poultry husbandry landscape in the United States is rapidly evolving in response to consumer demands. Ethical concerns over egg-laying hens housed in conventional cages have led to an ongoing, massive transition from caged to cage- free housing systems. Nearly 16% of the 312 million hens were in cage-free production in 2017 and this number is expected to go up to 75% in the next 10 years. A move towards these newer, more extensive systems means that the birds are provided more space, reared in bigger colonies, and the housing systems have complex designs with enrichments that come with unique health and welfare challenges. Aggressive pecking due to complex social structures and cannibalism, high prevalence of bone fractures, and outbreaks of different bacterial and protozoal diseases are the major problems associated with cage-free and floor-rearing systems. Similarly, on the broiler side,artificial selection and intensive management practices are under intense scrutiny to accommodate animal welfare concerns such as lameness and ascites.Early signs indicate that the dynamics of bird behavior and physiology could provide clues to effectively monitor the well-being of individual birds as well as early diagnosis of disease or management processes in flocks. Despite the promise of observing behavior and sensing physiology for monitoring health and wellbeing, the scale of these poultry production systems makes longitudinal monitoring of individual birds extremely challenging, and beyond the reach of current technology in the poultry industry. In short:this project is aimed at examining behavioral, technological and nutritional interventions to promote welfare of commercial poultry.
Animal Health Component
40%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
20%
Applied
40%
Developmental
40%
Goals / Objectives
Integrating technological advances into poultry systems. This will include collaborative research on incorporating engineering and technology to enhance system efficiency and sustainability through infrastructure development of blockchain production.
Establishing and adopting husbandry practices to a changing industry landscape. This collaborative research will encompass a multi-disciplinary approach to create a resilient poultry production system through optimal management of inputs and outputs in an ethically responsible manner.
Project Methods
Keel bone fractures in laying hens:Laying hen skeletal integrity continues to be an economic and welfare concern for the egg industry. Fracture rates, particularly of keel, appear to be increasing with the move from conventional cages to aviary or free-range systems (extensive systems).We recently completed a study assessing the type and extent of keel injuries commercial US flocks in 3 different housing systems (conventional cage, enriched colony cage, and cage-free aviary). Keel fractures were comparatively higher in non-cage housing systems but fractures were prevalent in caged birds (Petrik et al. 2015), which make it a multifactorial problem and demands multidimensional strategies. A number of nutrition and management efforts have been employed in recent years to reduce keel fracture prevalence in laying hens. The success of those interventions was limited as the majority was introduced when the hens had already started to incur fractures. Direct study of changes in keel bone properties in response to the nutritional or management intervention is lacking. In this proposed project, we will focus on promoting keel bone strength and maturity and reducing events of traumatic collision in the late pullet and early production period - a critical time point when fractures begin to appear. Furthermore,we propose longitudinal and cross-sectional studies to objectively monitor fractures and keel properties (structural and compositional) to document the outcome of our intervention in mitigating laying hen keel issues in an objective manner.Use of technology to detect and reduce lameness in broilers:Lameness, pulmonary hypertension (Ascites Syndrome), and woody breast myopathy are the major welfare and product quality issues in broilers that are linked to rapid growth rate and heavier muscle mass. As a result, reducing growth rate of commercial broilers through alternative lighting and feeding management or raising slower growing strains have been used in some industry niches as strategies to address public concerns regarding animal well-being. However, these strategies often increase resource use and burden the environment. Further, a link between accelerated growth rate and poor welfare has not been established consistently. For example, research has shown the incidences of lameness to be entirely a function of body weight and not growth rate. Similarly, at an individual bird level, ascites occurs when cardio-pulmonary capacity fails to correspond with weight gain, irrespective of the growth rate of the flock.Variables associated with lameness and ascites syndrome, such as bone strength, ratio between right and total ventricular weight, and arterial oxygen saturation, have been found to be moderately-to-strongly heritable, indicating that selection strategies could be used to ameliorate these welfare problems (Moghadam et al., 2001; Pakdel et al., 2002). However, success on that front has been limited, as a majority of previous studies had the following drawbacks - a) lack of early behavioral and physiological indicators of welfare, as most measurements were conducted after the manifestation of overt signs of lameness or ascites in experimentally induced scenarios, hence limiting the usefulness in selecting individuals under standard management practices; b) relying on post-necropsy sample collection, thereby confounding our understanding of interaction between growth rate and organ parameters with within-flock differences. The proposed research is unique in that we plan to use imaging and sensing technology that will allow us to make longitudinal assessment of physical parameters in the individual birds throughout their growth. This will enable us to identify reliable indicators to use for future selection programs or for developing practical assessment of broiler welfare. It will also provide objective measurements of stress and welfare under reduced growth regimens. The feeding and lighting management proposed in our study will create differential growth curves within the same genetic line, thereby objective correlation between welfare indicators, growth rate, and body weight is possible without the confounding effects of genetics.