A survey of commercial egg laying facilities in 1991 indicated that more than 70% of the laying hens in the U.S. were maintained in controlled environment housing and by the year 2000, this would exceed 82%. The survey also concluded that by the turn of the century, more than 38% of these houses would be cooled with either foggers or evaporative cooling systems. Since this survey was conducted,...

Common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) hens kept in different housing systems during laying period were exposed to a tonic immobility test. At the end of the laying period, the shortest duration of the tonic immobility, and thus the lowest fear level, was found in birds kept in enriched cages, i.e. cages equipped with 2 perches and a hiding place. The duration of the tonic immobility in hens kep...

In this paper, we start off by summarizing the key evolutionary turning points of machine learning APIs and conclude by laying out our vision for the future of this key enabling component that can power tomorrow’s ubiquitous intelligent systems.

Information retrieval systems are proliferating in biomedical settings, but many problems in indexing, retrieval, and evaluation of systems continue to exist. The SAPHIRE Project was undertaken to seek solutions to these problems. This paper summarizes the evaluation studies that have been done with SAPHIRE, highlighting the lessons learned and laying out the challenges ahead to all medical inf...

the aim of this study was to develop a quantitative radiographic method for assessment of experimentalosteoporosis in leghorn breed laying hens. three groups of 24 leghorn pullets were reared in cage and fed aration containing different calcium levels, including 3.55, 2.075 and 0.6 percent (for groups 1-3, respectively). the hens were fed this diet from 17 weeks of age to the end of the experim...

Housing systems for egg-laying hens range from small, pasture-based flocks to large, commercial-scale operations that intensively confine tens of thousands of hens indoors. The overwhelming majority of laying hens used for commercial egg production in the United States are confined in battery cages and provided 432.3 cm 2 (67 in 2 ) of space per bird. Cages prevent hens from performing the bulk...

Objective: The experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of different levels of germinated barley on performance and egg quality in laying hen. Methods: One hundred and twenty laying hens, 44-weeks old, Lohmann LSL hens were used in this experiment. Birds were assigned randomly to the groups, each of which consisted of 20 birds (4 replicate cages each containing 5 birds). The experiment w...