Plumage damage and back skin lesions in laying hens with untrimmed beak depend on rearing of pullets and genetics

ABSTRACT

1. Within a triennial project, 34 layer flocks with untrimmed beaks were examined regularly throughout the laying period to broaden knowledge on the occurrence and development of severe feather pecking and cannibalism, as well as on factors influencing this non-desirable behaviour.

2. Flocks involved 850 to 27,183 hens of seven different genetics, kept in a barn or on free-range systems. Damage to the plumage and skin was assessed in individual hens during each visit and their body weights recorded. Correlations smaller than 0.8 between different body areas for damage indicated the necessity to consider them separately. Accounting for the risk of bias due to unevenly distributed factors, regression functions were used to assess associations between pecking damage, losses and performance, housing and management conditions. In addition, temporal pattern of pecking damage for flocks with severe, medium and little damage was modelled using these functions.

3. As expected, plumage damage increased with age, whereas the development of skin lesions was less consistent. From 30 weeks of age, pecking damage on the back increased remarkably in flocks with the most severe scores compared to those with medium and little damage, especially during the later laying period. Associations were found between pecking damage on the back of hens with plumage quality of pullets when entering the layer house (point of lay). Damage to the vent/cloacal region was more pronounced in white compared to brown layers. However, this did not deny the importance of factors not significant in this study.

4. The study identified factors related to genetics and status of hens when entering the layer house, particularly the influence of the rearing phase.

KEYWORDS:

• Untrimmed beak
• layers
• feather pecking
• cannibalism
• plumage

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of all participating layer farmers and the Thuringian Poultry Farmers Association.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study is based on the project ‘Haltung von Legehennen mit ungekürzter Schnabelspitze’ [Keeping layers without beak trimming], project number: 2016 LFE 0003, EIP Agri operational group] founded by the Thüringer Aufbaubank and the Thuringian Animal Disease Fund.