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The causes and development of vent pecking are multifarious. Risk factors that have been identified as increasing vent pecking include dim lights placed in nest boxes to encourage hens to use the boxes, the diet being changed more than three times during the egg laying period, the use of bell drinkers, and the hens beginning to lay earlier than 20 weeks of age. [2]
Fitting pin-less blinders to laying hens leads to reduced activity, increased resting, adjustment problems in feeding, stereotypic head shaking and protracted displacement neck preening for a month after fitting. [3] In another study on laying hens, mortality was greater among hens wearing blinders compared to hens that had been beak-trimmed. [5]
Early experience can influence severe feather pecking in later life. [13] [20] [21] Commercial egg-laying hens have often already begun feather pecking when they are transferred to the egg laying farm from the rearing farm at approximately 16–20 weeks of age, and plumage quality can then rapidly deteriorate until peak lay at approximately 25 weeks of age.
Vent pecking, like feather pecking, is a gateway behaviour to cannibalism due to its cannibalistic features of hostility towards another individual that involves the aggressive tearing and damaging of the skin and tissue. Vent cannibalism was found to be the most common type of cannibalism causing death in autopsy results of laying hens. [13 ...
Mortalities, due mainly to cannibalism, can be up to 15% in egg-laying flocks housed in aviaries, [11] straw yards, [12] and free-range systems. [13] Because egg-laying strains of chickens can be kept in smaller group sizes in cage systems, cannibalism is reduced, [ 10 ] leading to a lowered trend in mortality as compared to non-cage systems.
PARIS/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Bird flu vaccines for laying hens are effective in practice, the Dutch government said on Tuesday, while confirming plans to vaccinate poultry against the virus that ...
The theory gained steam on Facebook, TikTok and Twitter in recent weeks, with some users reporting that their hens stopped laying eggs and speculating that common chicken feed products were the cause.
The great majority of laying birds used for egg production are chickens. Methods for keeping layers range from free-range systems, where the birds can roam as they will but are housed at night for their own protection, through semi-intensive systems where they are housed in barns and have perches, litter and some freedom of movement, to ...