Effective Enrichments for Broiler Breeders

Enrichment is the process of improving the environment of an animal, to meet their behavioral needs and ultimately improve their welfare. Enrichment helps to reduce stress and improve welfare by providing physical and mental stimulation, encouraging highly-motivated species specific behaviors, allowing the animal more control over their life and environment, as well as increasing an animal’s ability to cope with physiological and behavioral challenges.

Although the research related to enrichments for broiler breeders is sparse, there are several different types of enrichments that have been shown to be beneficial for broiler breeders. This article will cover a few of the enrichments that are effective for broiler breeders. (See Vol. 5 for information on broiler specific enrichments).

An effective enrichment will reduce or prevent abnormal behaviors, reduce stress and fear, increase behavioral choice, or improve physical and mental health. A variety of enrichments are available, with physical (these increase environmental complexity and provide animals the opportunity to perform natural behaviors) e.g. a perch or tactile (these encourage animals’ investigation and play behavior) being the most commonly used e.g. bales of substrates.

Enrichments can be used throughout all phases of broiler breeder production: brooding, rearing and laying phases.

When enrichments are introduced early in production, the interaction with enrichments and complex environments has been shown to have long term positive impacts on bird behavior and welfare. For example, studies have been that providing enrichments during rearing improves neuroplasticity, reduces incidences of feather pecking and feather damage (Hocking et al, 2005), decreases the bird's fear levels (Brake et al., 1994), and improves behaviors such as nestbox usage (Brake, 1987) later in production.

Perches and elevated structures

Birds exhibit a preference for high resting places due to a motivated instinct to protect themselves from predators (de Jong and van Emous, 2017). Overall, studies on perches show that broiler breeders are highly motivated to perch and particularly at night for resting (Gebhardt-Henrich, et al., 2017). Different studies have looked at broiler breeder preference on perch design, focusing on different materials (wood, metal, plastic), dimensions, and different shapes (rectangular, rounded/oval, circular/round, mushroom shaped) (Brandes et al., 2022; Vasdal et al., 2022b). Overall, it seems that perch height is more critical to the decisions on perch usage than material or shape ( Vasdal et al., 2022b).

Overall benefits of perches are the ability to perform highly motivated perching behavior, increase in nest usage and reduction in floor eggs, improved leg health and footpad dermatitis scores, improved survival rate during heat stress, and reduction in fear level. Brake, 1987; Brake et al., 1994; Gebhardt-Henrich, et al., 2017; Gebhardt-Henrich,et al., 2018; Vasdal et al., 2022a) However, some studies have found an increase in keel bone fractures when broiler breeders had access to perches (Gebhardt-Henrich, et al., 2017; Gebhardt-Henrich, et al., 2018; Vasdal et al., 2022a).

Cover Panels

Effective Enrichments for Broiler Breeders - Image 2

Cover panels are mesh screen panels attached to a support stand placed within the litter area of the floor. These panels provide birds with an opportunity to hide and allow for better distribution of males and females throughout the house (Leone and Estevez, 2008; Estevez, 2009). Overall, the cover panels have been found to reduce wing, tail, and head injuries, and they also increased egg production, as well as resulted in a higher peak fertility, a longer laying period, and improved hatchability (Leone and Estevez, 2008).

Bales of substrate

Bales of substrate such as wood shavings, straw, or lucerne hay are another possible enrichments. These bales of substrate provide birds with the opportunity to perch, perform exploratory behaviors, and provide an opportunity to avoid other birds. In broiler breeders, studies have looked at bales of wood shavings, and have found that the addition of these enrichments reduces aggression during rearing, decreases the number of head peck injuries, and improves eggshell quality, and helps promote leg and bone health (King et al., 2001; Edmond et al., 2004).

Effective Enrichments for Broiler Breeders - Image 3

FINAL NOTES

-The provision of enrichments helps promote highly motivated species-specific behaviors, reduces aggression and abnormal behaviors, benefits bird health, and can improve egg production, egg quality, as well as hatchability and fertility.

-More research is needed on enrichment usage in broiler breeders, and it’s impact on bird welfare and productivity. As well as research looking at the best way to adopt enrichments within our current management systems.

This article was originally published on Poultry Extension Collaborative (PEC) and it is reproduced here with permission from the authors.