Short-term feeding behaviour has a similar structure in broilers, turkeys and ducks

Abstract

International audience1. This study is the first to quantitatively compare the structure of feeding behaviour of broilers, ducks and turkeys as recorded by electronic feeders. It tests the hypothesis that this structure is so similar that the same models would be suitable to group the feeding behaviour of these species into meals. 2. Visits to electronic feeders were recorded from 3,470 broilers, 3,314 turkeys and 480 ducks. The frequency distributions of the length of short intervals to feeders varied between species as a result of differences in the number of visits within a feeding bout, the frequency of re-visits to the same feeder and probably in the likelihood of birds drinking within meals. 3. The lengths of longer day-time intervals between visits to feeders were all log-normally distributed. Disaggregation of these intervals by feeding strategy (i.e. meal frequency) showed that the probability of birds starting to feed increased with time since feeding last in all species, which is consistent with the satiety concept. 4. Two methods, one based on fitting a truncated log-normal, the other on observed changes in the probability of birds starting to feed with time since feeding last, gave very similar meal criteria estimates. These ranged from 1050 to 1200 sec in broilers, 1650 to 1725 sec in ducks and 1250 to 1320 sec in turkeys. 5. There were large between-species differences in the average number of daily meals, intake per meal, and feeding rate. Despite this variation, the overall structure of feeding behaviour of broilers, ducks and turkeys was so similar that the same models were suitable for application in all three species. This would allow for standardised analyses of feeding behaviour of different avian species kept in different husbandry systems

The effect of passive immunization against ghrelin on feed and water intake in turkeys

“…Feeding behavior in poultry is organized in frequent bouts, and the time devoted for feeding depends (at least) on species and the size and hardness of the feed particle. For instance, broilers spend more time feeding than turkeys (Howie et al, 2010), and more time is spent when a mash concentrate is fed compared with more coarse diets (Yo et al, 1997a;Martaresche et al, 2000). Similar to pecking behavior, feeding time did not reach statistical significance.…”

The temporal structure of feeding behavior

“…We provide an overview (Table 1) and a brief description of the used data sets and refer for more details to earlier publications on pigs (48,49,74), dolphins (33), broilers (28,29,30), ducks (7,30), turkeys (30), and rats (46). Data from pigs and avian species were collected day and night via electronic feeders that supplied ad libitum pelleted food and recorded visits of animals wearing a transponder.…”

“…Rats recorded little feeding activity between 0100 and 0900 (12% of daily intake) but consumed 48% and 40% of daily intake between 0900 (when fresh food was supplied) and 2000 and during the first part of the dark period (between 2000 and 0100), respectively. To avoid undesirable effects of pooling of data across nonuniform behavior caused by diurnal variation (28,30,49,77), data collected during the night (avian species) or the second part of the night (rats), when feeding activity was extremely low, were not included in the analyses. For reasons discussed below, only the analysis of night-time pig data (74) are presented.…”

“…The frequency distributions of log-transformed interval lengths were very similar for broilers and turkeys (30) and, therefore, only the broiler data are presented here. Both species clearly showed a population of long (i.e., between-meal) intervals (30) (Fig.…”

“…4, H and I). From the model parameters, meal criteria around 30 min were calculated, similar to the 28.8min estimate for ducks that was obtained using one of the methodologies discussed below (30).…”