The Study On Social Characteristics Of Finishing Period Hens And Its Effects On Perch Competition In Furnished Cages

Because of the narrow barren environment in the traditional cage, this caused layers movement restriction and unable to show their instinct behavior, it was harmful to welfare of laying hens. Furnished cages had been developed as a new feeding system, and the systems had more useful space, and some facilities such as neat box, perch and dust bath, so hens in these systems had better welfare status than that of conventional cages. As we know that poultry was social animals, the layers in cages also show a social hierarchy. When there was a shortage of resources within a group, there will be competition occur for resources. Therefore, in the design of cages the social factors should be considered for groups of laying hens.The 9 week old Hy-line variety brown laying hens was used in this study as the research object and aimed to study whether there was sociality in the furnished cage, and to explore the influence of different social order on the use of different resources. This study was consists of two parts: the first part of the study was to investigate the effect of soc iality on the utilization of environmental resources in hens growing period, namely determine if there was sociality in hens group of furnished cage, effects of hens social dominance on the use of high or low welfare resource such as perch and dust bath, and to compare the effects of different social rank on perching behavior, dusting behavior and general behavior. The second part was to try to use limited changeable perch to establish the index of perch competition, and to determine the social order in a small group.In experimental one: 6 types of new group from three different rearing environments(single conventional cage, ten per conventional cage, forty per conventional cage) were determined and their social ranking were deterimined withthe Clutton-Brock index, observe the effects of hens social dominance on use situation in high or low resource allocation. The results showed that the new group from different pretreatment group can form a new social order, and can not be affected by the early stage of the different social composition. There was a significant effect in the use of perch by diferent social rank hens, there was a significant effect on the perching behaciour performance of the different social ranks(p<0.01), there was no significant effect on the perching behavior by high or low resources allocation(p>0.05), and the high social order hens show more perching behavior than the medium class hens.The medium social order hens show ed more perching behavior than the low ones. There was a very significant effect on the squatting by high or low resources allocation(p<0.01), and the perching behavior in high resource allocation was more than in the low. The interaction impact between the two influence factor had no significant effect on the perching behavior(p>0.05). There was no significant effect in the use of dust bath by the different social orders hens. In addition to the vertical wing shaking, there was no significant effect in dust-bathing behavior by the different social orders and resource alloca tion(p>0.05). And the dust-bathing behavior performance was less in the furnished cages, bill raking, vertical wing shaking, side scratching, vigorous body shaking, head forward and head under the wing was showed less. In the dust bath, only show the pecking and body movement simply. In addition to the standing and preening, there was no significant effect on the general behavior by the different social orders and resource allocation(p>0.05);There was a very significant effect on the standing behavior by the high or low resource allocation(p<0.01), and show more standing behavior in the low resource allocation than in the high; There was a significant effect on the preening behavior by the high or low resource allocation(p<0.05), and show more preening behavior in the high resource allocation than in the low.The experimental two was to observe the perch resource conditions in the different perch variation(perch increasing, perch decreasing and no perch changing), attempt to establish perch competition index, and to determine the social order in the cage group by the analysis of perching use situation in the different social order. The results showed that there was no observation in perch use competitively, there is no struggle between the hens in the use of p erch, no showed the behavior of occupying the perch. There was no significant effect on the perch single use time by the different social order in the group IP and group DP(p>0.05), and there was a very significant effect on the perch use times and total use time duration(p<0.01); there was a very significant effect on the day perch use times, night perch use times and night perch single use time by the different social order hens(p<0.01); there was no significant effect on the day perch single use time by the different social order(p>0.05); there was no significant effect on the perch use times and single use time by the different social order hens in controls(p>0.05). Through the perch competition formula, we can get the individual perch competition index in every cages, the higher index of the individual in the group, the higher social dominance, and vice versa.This study concluded that the hens in the furnished cages showed social structure; there was a significant effect on the perching behavior by the different social dominance and resource competation, and was no effect on the dust-bathing and general bahaviour; and can determine the hens social order of small group hens preliminarily by the observation of perch use situation in limited perch variation.