195
Views
71
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Original Articles

Assessment of fear in adult laying hens: Correlational analysis of methods and measures

Pages 319-326 | Received 29 Jul 1986, Published online: 08 Nov 2007
 

Abstract

1. The fear responses of adult laying hens of two lines, flighty and docile, were assessed in each of three commonly employed and widely differing test situations. These were the pen with cone, novel rod and tonic immobility tests.

2. Each hen was ranked for fearfulness on each behaviour pattern recorded and was then assigned an overall ‘fear rank’ in each of the three tests.

3. Significant intra‐individual correlations were found in both lines between the ranked responses within tests and between the overall fear ranks assigned in each of the three test situations.

4. The findings support the use of these tests as methods of assessing fear in adult laying hens and are considered to reflect the estimation of general underlying states of fear rather than stimulus‐specific responses.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.