Stress adversely affects the wellbeing of commercial chickens, and comes with an economic cost to the industry that cannot be ignored. In this paper, we first develop an inexpensive and non-invasive, automatic online-monitoring prototype that uses sound data to notify producers of a stressful situation in a commercial poultry facility. The proposed system is structured hierarchically with three...

Background Dietary intake of lycopene has been associated with a reduced risk of ovarian cancer, suggesting its chemopreventive potential against ovarian carcinogenesis. Lycopene's molecular mechanisms of action in ovarian cancer have not been fully understood. Therefore, in the present study, we investigated the effects of lycopene on the ovarian cancer formation using the laying hen model, a ...

Loss of shell colour in brown-egg layers is a shell quality issue in Australia and is periodically associated with free range egg production. This study investigated the loss of shell colour that occurs in some flocks of free range laying hens. Hens laying pale-coloured egg shells on a commercial free range farm were transferred to cages in an experimental facility. Egg quality was measured imm...

Several dietary alternatives to feed withdrawal have been proposed to induce a molt in laying hens. This study compared the behavior of laying hens on an alfalfa crumble diet (ALC) to hens that were either on a conventional layer diet (FF) or hens that had feed withdrawn (FW) during a 9-d trial. Each treatment consisted of 24 hens (3 hens per battery cage), and treatment began after a 2-week ac...

The air of animal dwellings can contain great amounts of bioaerosol composed of dust, bacteria, fungi, and endotoxins. The composition may depend on animal species, building construction, animal accommodation, and microclimate parameters, to name just a few factors. Pathogens contained may be a serious threat to animal and human health.The aim of our study was to analyse the fungi aerosol conte...

Much work has been done during recent years in investigating the calcium partition in the blood of laying hens. From this work an attempt has been made to determine the nature of the non-diffusible calcium. Although Laskowski (1) and Benjamin and Hess (2) investigated the partition of inorganic phosphorus in connection with the study of calcium in the serum of the laying hen, little has been do...

This study was conducted to determine effects of dietary NaHCO supplementation on egg 3 production and egg quality during the late laying period. Hisex Brown layers, 54 wks of age, were blocked according to the cage location and then assigned randomly to receive one of four diets containing 0, 0.1, 0.2, or 0.4% NaHCO for 75 d. Each diet was replicated in 6 groups; each consisting of 2 cages con...

The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of organic acids and the prebiotic fructans on egg production and eggshell quality when added to the layer diet with different levels of calcium and phosphorus. The experiment was carried out on 168 Bovans Brown hens, allocated to 14 groups of 12 replications. Each hen (replication) was kept in an individual cage 40 cm × 40 cm in size. A 2 × 7 fac...

BACKGROUND Cracked shells, due to age related reduction of shell quality, are a costly problem for the industry. Parallel to reduced shell quality the skeleton becomes brittle resulting in bone fractures. Calcium, a main prerequisite for both eggshell and bone, is regulated by estrogen in a complex manner. The effects of estrogen, given in a low continuous dose, were studied regarding factors i...

The experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of dihydropyridine on laying performance and fat metabolism of laying hens. Five hundred and forty laying hens, 40 weeks old, were randomly allotted to three groups, each of which included four replicates of 45 hens. The groups were given a basal corn-soybean meal diet supplemented with 0, 150 mg/kg and 300 mg/kg dihydropyridine. Results s...