Effect of on-farm hatching and elevated platforms on behavior and performance in fast-growing broiler chickens

Summary

Alternative hatching systems compared to conventional hatchery-hatched systems showed positive effects on welfare of broiler chickens. In order to investigate an additional positive effect of elevated platforms, two hatching methods (on-farm [OH] vs. hatchery-hatched [HH]) and two environments from the first day onwards (with elevated platforms [enriched] vs. without elevated platforms [control]) were combined and investigated using a 2 × 2 factorial design. In three consecutive trials, the combination of the four treatments were repeated eight times each. One thousand six hundred fast-growing broiler chickens (Ross strain) were reared in a mixed-sex system. Chick quality was assessed at hatch and performance parameters and behavior parameters were measured during the entire rearing period of 35 d. For the statistical analysis, LME's and GLMM's were used depending on the data. In general, hatching system and housing environment showed no interaction. There were no differences in hatchability between treatment groups (p=0.93). However, OH chickens showed a higher body weight throughout the rearing period (all p<0.001). OH chickens had a lower body temperature than HH chickens (p=0.002) during the rearing period. OH chickens compared to HH chickens tended to show a higher usage of elevated platform at night (p=0.07). The enriched groups showed higher activity (p<0.0001), but no improved walking ability (p=0.82) than the control groups. The differences in performance and behavior were low between hatching systems and may be related to the short period of feed and water deprivation and the lack of long commercial processing and transportation procedures in the HH treatment group in our experiment. Overall, both on-farm hatching and elevated platforms can lead to an improvement of performance and activity parameters and, thus, an improvement of certain aspects of animal welfare but both factors do not seem to interact with each other.