The Dual-Purpose Hen as a Chance: Avoiding Injurious Pecking in Modern Laying Hen Husbandry

Abstract

Dual-purpose strains, with hens housed for egg laying and roosters kept for meat production are one alternative to the killing of male day-old chickens. However, dual-purpose hens seem to have additional advantages compared to conventional layers, for instance, a lower tendency to develop behavioral disorders, such as feather pecking and cannibalism. In the present study, three batches of about 1850 conventional layers (Lohmann Brown plus, LB+) and 1850 dual-purpose hens (Lohmann Dual, LD) each, all of them with untrimmed beaks, were observed during production (20–71 (56) weeks of life) in a semi-commercial aviary system. The aim was to investigate whether the hybrid and batch affected the occurrence of injurious pecking, and to identify a detailed time course of the damage caused by this behavior. Therefore, the hens’ plumage and skin condition were assessed as an indicator by means of a visual scoring method. The LB+ hens had higher production performances and higher mortality rates compared to the LD hens. Plumage loss in the LB+ flocks started at 23 to 25 weeks of age, and deteriorated continuously. The LD hens showed only moderate feather loss on the head/neck region, which started at 34 to 41 weeks and remained almost constant until the end of the observations. Compared to feather loss, injuries occurred in the LB+ hens with a delay of several weeks, with a maximum of 8% to 12% of hens affected. In contrast, skin injuries were observed only sporadically in single LD hens. In all batches, hybrid had an effect on the occurrence of feather loss (p < 0.05). Within the LB+ strain, the proportions of hens affected by plumage loss and injuries differed among batches (p < 0.05), whereas this was not the case in the LD flocks. Thus, severe feather pecking and cannibalism seemed to occur in the conventional layer hybrids but not in the dual-purpose hens, though both genetic strains were raised and managed under the same semi-commercial conditions. Therefore, keeping dual-purpose hens should also be considered as an alternative approach to avoid injurious pecking in laying hen husbandry.

Yield Performance, Laying Behaviour Traits and Egg Quality of Purebred and Hybrid Hens Reared under Outdoor Conditions

“…The original idea behind creating these dual-purpose breeds was to create hens with good muscle development. Nowadays, alternative hybrids, such as modern dual-purpose hens, have been created for increasing socio-ethical and legal concerns [17]. In dual-purpose hybrids, the hens should lay a sufficient number of eggs and roosters should show an acceptable fattening performance and thus both sexes gain not only intrinsic, but also economic value [17].…”

“…Nowadays, alternative hybrids, such as modern dual-purpose hens, have been created for increasing socio-ethical and legal concerns [17]. In dual-purpose hybrids, the hens should lay a sufficient number of eggs and roosters should show an acceptable fattening performance and thus both sexes gain not only intrinsic, but also economic value [17]. As far as the feed efficiency in egg production is concerned, the comparison between Hy-Line (HLB and HLW) and dual-purpose (ER and RM) hens showed hybrids to be more efficient; for the dual-purpose breeds the feed efficiency concerning body muscle production should also be considered, given that the purebreds showed feed intakes similar to those of hybrids when reared in outdoor conditions similar to those of this trial [18].…”

“…For the intensively reared layer hybrid strains, the percentages of defective eggs throughout the laying period and their main causes are known [21][22][23][24]. Little is known about laying behaviour and damaged eggs of dual-purpose hybrids [17,25] and purebred hens reared under outdoor conditions [5]. The number of defective eggs per daily production is very important, given hygiene purposes and the quantity of declassed or lost eggs for market.…”

Dual-Purpose Poultry in Organic Egg Production and Effects on Egg Quality Parameters

“…Here we addressed the egg quality, which is required to be high for both a feasible economic production of the farmer, and for the consumer willingness to pay a higher egg-price as production costs will be higher than for the egg production with egg layer genotypes. To avoid killing of day-old male layer chickens, more research is needed on e.g., feather pecking behavior [ 52 ], meat quality [ 28 ], and dietary needs for production [ 27 , 48 ] to be able to implement dual-purpose genotypes in the poultry production of tomorrow.…”

Laying hen biodiversity: a study on the effect of age on the yield performance and quality of eggs produced by two Italian purebred hens

“…The increasing interest shown by consumers in animal welfare and rearing systems, and for the typical and regional products, besides the perspective by the producer of counteracting the drugs uses in the intensive production systems and the body abnormalities of the highly productive selected hybrids, have induced a progressive request to genotypes whose productivity can be enhanced in less intensive production systems, such as free-range and organic. Furthermore, dual-purpose purebreds can counteract the problem of culling one-day old male birds of laying strains, given that the males can be used for meat production and the females for egg production (Giersberg et al, 2020). The knowledge of the anatomical and physiological traits as well as the production traits of a breed is important for the breeding activity, which can obtain F1 crossed birds with a specific production profile.…”