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Large variation in the movement of individual broiler chickens tracked in a commercial house using ultra-wideband backpacks

Our understanding of the movement patterns of individual broiler chickens in large flocks is extremely limited. Here we report the use of a Real Time Locating System to track individual broilers in a house of 28 000 birds. Broilers were fitted with backpacks containing ultra-wideband tags on day 21...

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Autores principales: Baxter, Mary, O’Connell, Niamh E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10175278/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37169813
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-34149-0
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author Baxter, Mary
O’Connell, Niamh E.
author_facet Baxter, Mary
O’Connell, Niamh E.
author_sort Baxter, Mary
collection PubMed
description Our understanding of the movement patterns of individual broiler chickens in large flocks is extremely limited. Here we report the use of a Real Time Locating System to track individual broilers in a house of 28 000 birds. Broilers were fitted with backpacks containing ultra-wideband tags on day 21 (N = 8 broilers) or day 24 (N = 9 broilers), with tags recording positioning and distance data until Day 38. Tagged birds were penned overnight on Day 31 to avoid ‘thinning’. We found no clear evidence of broilers consistently creating similar sized “home ranges”. Some broilers spent most time < 10 m from where they were originally found while others visited at least 90% of the house in the period before thinning. While some broilers rapidly returned to the area they were collected from at thinning, the majority did not. Movement data suggested that broilers that restricted themselves to smaller areas of the house were not necessarily less active. Although there was an average reduction in movement with age, this was not linear and there was individual variation. There was also no clear association between movement patterns and broiler weight or gait score, suggesting a more complicated relationship between activity, ranging and some welfare measures.
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spelling pubmed-101752782023-05-13 Large variation in the movement of individual broiler chickens tracked in a commercial house using ultra-wideband backpacks Baxter, Mary O’Connell, Niamh E. Sci Rep Article Our understanding of the movement patterns of individual broiler chickens in large flocks is extremely limited. Here we report the use of a Real Time Locating System to track individual broilers in a house of 28 000 birds. Broilers were fitted with backpacks containing ultra-wideband tags on day 21 (N = 8 broilers) or day 24 (N = 9 broilers), with tags recording positioning and distance data until Day 38. Tagged birds were penned overnight on Day 31 to avoid ‘thinning’. We found no clear evidence of broilers consistently creating similar sized “home ranges”. Some broilers spent most time < 10 m from where they were originally found while others visited at least 90% of the house in the period before thinning. While some broilers rapidly returned to the area they were collected from at thinning, the majority did not. Movement data suggested that broilers that restricted themselves to smaller areas of the house were not necessarily less active. Although there was an average reduction in movement with age, this was not linear and there was individual variation. There was also no clear association between movement patterns and broiler weight or gait score, suggesting a more complicated relationship between activity, ranging and some welfare measures. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-05-11 /pmc/articles/PMC10175278/ /pubmed/37169813 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-34149-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Baxter, Mary
O’Connell, Niamh E.
Large variation in the movement of individual broiler chickens tracked in a commercial house using ultra-wideband backpacks
title Large variation in the movement of individual broiler chickens tracked in a commercial house using ultra-wideband backpacks
title_full Large variation in the movement of individual broiler chickens tracked in a commercial house using ultra-wideband backpacks
title_fullStr Large variation in the movement of individual broiler chickens tracked in a commercial house using ultra-wideband backpacks
title_full_unstemmed Large variation in the movement of individual broiler chickens tracked in a commercial house using ultra-wideband backpacks
title_short Large variation in the movement of individual broiler chickens tracked in a commercial house using ultra-wideband backpacks
title_sort large variation in the movement of individual broiler chickens tracked in a commercial house using ultra-wideband backpacks
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10175278/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37169813
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-34149-0
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