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Pain management

Preventing excessive feather pecking behaviour

By October 22nd, 2020November 23rd, 2020No Comments

Document type : article published in Poultry World

Author: Sunita van Es-Sahota

Preview: Beak trimming has been the go to solution to prevent feather pecking in chickens and turkeys. However, since 2018 this is no longer allowed in the Netherlands. Scientists from Wageningen University are looking into improving chicken welfare by finding alternative measures to combat injurious pecking behaviour.

Feather pecking and cannibalism are common in chickens and can cause a lot of discomfort, some chickens literally peck each other to death. These behavioural problems seem to occur both in intensive farming systems and in organic and hobby poultry farms. There are many factors that can have an influence on severe feather pecking behaviour: the feed composition; the climate; the size of the group and the type of light in the house, to name a few. All of these factors can also influence one another. There doesn't seem to be one stand-alone reason that can explain what causes the behaviour.

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From the Poultry World website