Maternal care of domestic chicks- traditional vs dual purpose hens
Abstract
The commercial laying hens have been genetically selected for increased egg production but this is accompanied by inability to become broody and injurious feather pecking. However, the developed modern dual purpose hens display reduced feather pecking, cannibalism and as an alternative to the killing of day-old male layer chickens (Giersberg et al., 2020). Dual purpose hens still exhibit nesting behaviours and some strain still retain their broodiness characteristics, it is unknown to what extent the commercial dual purpose hens become broody or how broodiness can be induced in them naturally so that they can serve as foster hens instead of the traditional hens. Very little has been done on dual-purpose chickens and maternal care (do they show broodiness and/or care?) and in terms of chick behaviour following maternal care. Therefore, this project will address three research questions;
1) Does selection for dual purpose hen affect broodiness and mothering of chicks? 2) Does the behaviour of a foster hen differ from that of a mother hen in caring for chicks? and 3) Do foster chicks behave differently from a mother raised chicks?.
Principal investigators
Participating organisational units of HU Berlin
Participating external organisations
Financer
AvH: Research subsidy
Duration of project
Start date: 03/2022
End date: 08/2024
