In many mechanical designs, such as airborne electro-optical platform, optical lenses, mechanical containers, speed reducer, and so on, lightweight design has always been our goal. Under various constraints, obtaining the minimum of some parameter is the optimization problem we often encounter in the engineering works. Chicken Swarm Optimization (CSO), a new bioinspired algorithm, is namely app...

The movement of flocks with a single leader (and a directed path from it to every agent) can be stabilized over time as has been shown before (for details see [3] and prior references therein, shorter descriptions are given in [1, 4]). But for large flocks perturbations in the movement of the leader may nonetheless grow to a considerable size as they propagate throughout the flock and before th...

The present study was conducted with a view to know the productive and reproductive parameters of Black Bengal goat in a nucleus breeding flock of Bangladesh Agricultural University, and two other regions i.e., Modhupur (Tangail) and Dimla, (Nilphamari). Data were collected on a regular basis from January 2011 to January 2012. The results showed that birth weight of kids was significantly affec...

In this exploratory study, we tracked free-range laying hens on two commercial flocks with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology with the aim to examine individual hen variation in range use. Three distinct outdoor zones were identified at increasing distances from the shed; the veranda [0-2.4 m], close range [2.4-11.4 m], and far range [>11.4 m]. Hens' movements between these areas ...

Pullorum disease causing acute septicemia and mortality in adult brown chickens was diagnosed in a small-farm chicken flock in Iowa. Also, Salmonella Pullorum was isolated from the intestine of one of four rats trapped on this index farm. Tracing movements of spent hens from the index farm resulted in identification of a second infected flock on a contact farm. Poultry on the contact farm were ...

The objectives of this study were 1) to compute appropriate mathematical curves that describe the daily production process by the input variables daily feed consumption, water consumption, ambient temperature, and output variables hen-day egg production, egg weight, second grade eggs, floor eggs, cumulative mortality, body weight, and flock uniformity; and 2) to obtain insights into the daily v...

Flocks of birds exhibit a remarkable degree of coordination and collective response. It is not just that thousands of individuals fly, on average, in the same direction and at the same speed, but that even the fluctuations around the mean velocity are correlated over long distances. Quantitative measurements on flocks of starlings, in particular, show that these fluctuations are scale-free, wit...

salmonella spp. are important food borne pathogens worldwide that frequently infect poultry flocks. this cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the prevalence of salmonella spp. colonization in broiler flocks in shiraz (southern iran) and to find the possible association of infection status with some potential risk factors including vaccination program and use of antibiotics. during o...

When travelling in groups, animals frequently have to make decisions on the direction of travel. These decisions can be based on consensus, when all individuals take part in the decision (i.e. democratic decision; social information), or leadership, when one member or a minority of members make the decision (i.e. despotic decision; personal information). Here we investigated whether decision-ma...