1. Possible association between high rates of feather pecking and increased stress were investigated in laying hens. 2. From week 19 to week 30 after hatching, 16 groups of 11 hens (white Lohman Selected Leghorn hybrids) were kept in pens with or without long-cut straw as foraging material and provided with food in the form of pellets or mash. 3. Stress was assessed by egg production, weight ga...

How do managers set financial policy? Most popular theories of financial policy are developed in terms of a marginal analysis for a new project available to the firm that is extraordinary in spirit. However, extraordinary investment observations have not been previously isolated for study. This paper uses a sample of firms making extraordinary investments to probe deeper into the driving forces...

A selection experiment was initiated in 1996 in which selection for (HP line) and against (LP line) feather pecking was performed. The foundation stock was a White Leghorn layer strain established in 1970 and maintained since then as a random bred control line at the Institute. Six hatches were produced over three generations. At the age of 68 weeks (generation 0, 1996), 35 weeks (generation 1,...

Severe feather pecking (SFP) in laying hens is a detrimental behavior causing loss of feathers, skin damage and cannibalism. Previously, we have associated changes in frontal brain serotonin (5-HT) turnover and dopamine (DA) turnover with alterations in feather pecking behavior in young pullets (28-60 days). Here, brain monoamine levels were measured in adult laying hens; focusing on four brain...

Time budget of turkeys (Maleagris gallopavo) reared under free-range and confinement rearing systems was recorded and compared from day old chick to sixth months of age. Throughout the study period, M. gallopavo reared under free-range rearing system spent relatively greater time in litter pecking (23.51%) followed by walking (19.99%), feeding (16.33%), preening (13.72%), feather pecking (6.07%...

In Experiment 1, food-deprived pigeons received delayed symbolic matching to sample training in a darkened Skinner box. Trials began with the illumination of the grain feeder lamp (no food sample), or illumination of this lamp, accompanied by the raising of the feeder tray (food sample). After a delay of a few seconds, the two side response keys were illuminated, one with red and one with green...

The dextrous foraging skills of primates, including humans, are underpinned by flexible vision-guided control of the arms/hands and even tools as body-part extensions. This capacity involves a visuomotor conversion process that transfers the locations of the hands/arms and a target in retinal coordinates into body coordinates to generate a reaching/grasping movement and to correct online. Simil...

Variance components and selection response for feather pecking behavior were studied by analyzing the data from a divergent selection experiment. An investigation indicated that a Box-Cox transformation with power lambda = -0.2 made the data approximately normally distributed and gave the best fit for the model. Variance components and selection response were estimated using Bayesian analysis w...

BACKGROUND Feather pecking and cannibalism are major concerns in poultry farming, both in terms of animal welfare and farm economics. Genetic selection and introduction of (aspects of) maternal care have been suggested as potential interventions to reduce feather pecking in laying hens. Altered brain development has been proposed to reflect welfare states in animals, and can provide more insigh...

Environmental enrichment is thought likely to benefit chickens and farmers in many ways; these include reduced fearfulness and feather pecking and improved productivity. Enrichment devices would intuitively be more effective if they reliably attracted and sustained appreciable interest but many fail to do so. This may reflect the fact that the choice of stimuli often reflects availability and h...