Carolyn De Koning

Frequent visits to an outdoor range has been associated with good meat chicken welfare but not all chickens will access the outdoor range when provided with the opportunity (Taylor et al., 2018). On average, it takes an average of three to four days for most meat chickens in commercial conditions to access the range after the pop-holes first open (Taylor et al., 2017a). Yet chickens that access th ...

I. INTRODUCTIONDetermination of range usage by hens can be difficult for researchers and free-range egg farmers, particularly usage on the outer sections of the range (i.e., > 50 m from the hen shed). Live counts only give a snapshot of numbers of hens on the range at a defined time point and do not show the frequency of range usage. Camera traps, also referred to as trail cameras and wildlife ...

Quantification of range use in commercial meat chicken flocks is desirable so that farmers can objectively assess meaningful range access, including number of chickens using the range and how far chickens roam from the shed. Currently there is no cost-effective technology for quantifying range use in commercial conditions, and farm staff perform assessments based on visual inspection. A proof-of-c ...

There is some evidence that commercial meat chickens prefer to access the range through ‘favoured’ pop-holes (Taylor et al., 2017); however what makes pop-holes attractive or aversive is unknown. Therefore, we aimed to i) determine the most aversive stimuli associated with pop-holes and ii) identify the most effective artificial structure to minimise aversion.We hypothesised that the s ...

I. INTRODUCTIONMaintaining vegetation on free range farms with fixed ranges is a significant issue (Singh et al., 2017). Nonetheless, free range accreditation programs stipulate palatable vegetation to be available on the range at all times (RSPCA 2015). This is more problematic to achieve during dry seasonal conditions and drought, which are common features of the Australian climate. II. MET ...