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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Helen GrayORCiD, Emma Malcolm, Dr Katherine Herborn, David Armstrong, Dr Jessica MartinORCiD, Professor Lucy Asher
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s), 2024. Finding effective ways to monitor laying hen welfare is challenging as UK flock sizes can reach 16,000 birds. Eggs provide potential for welfare monitoring, as they are a daily output with previous evidence of links to stress. We explored the associations between stressors and eggs using two complementary studies. In Study 1, hens experienced social or heat stressors and eggs were scored daily for defects in shell characteristics. All eggs were scored on a three-point scale: 1 (no defect); 2 (minor defects); or 3 (unsuitable for whole egg sale in the UK). Texture defects were higher after stress treatments and were explored further as a promising proxy measure of welfare. In Study 2, eggshell texture from five commercial flocks was scored before versus at the onset of an avian influenza-enforced indoor housing, and scores were correlated with industry data for egg quality. Eggs were more likely to have texture defects after the enforced indoor housing, and manually scored texture correlated significantly with shell strength and shell colour during automated grading. Shell strength was weaker immediately after the enforced indoor housing and eggs were darker. We suggest that eggshell texture could be a useful addition to assessing changes or stresses in a hen’s environment for both research and commercial purposes, but further validation is needed to understand the generalisability of these results to other stressors. Additionally, data already collected in factories, such as shell strength and colour, may provide information on stress and could be valorised for understanding hen welfare.
Author(s): Gray HE, Malcolm EL, Herborn K, Armstrong D, Martin JE, Asher L
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Animal Welfare
Year: 2024
Volume: 33
Online publication date: 20/11/2024
Acceptance date: 31/07/2024
Date deposited: 09/12/2024
ISSN (print): 0962-7286
ISSN (electronic): 2054-1538
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/awf.2024.46
DOI: 10.1017/awf.2024.46
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