Feeding behaviors of laying hens and pullets with or without beak trimming

Understanding feeding characteristics of animals is of fundamental value to engineering design and management strategies for enhanced well-being and production efficiency. White Leghorn laying hens have a high tendency of feather pecking and cannibalism. Beak trimming has been a management practice used by the U.S. poultry industry to prevent such cannibalism. However, beak trimming may temporarily or permanently alter the feeding behavior of the birds, which may need to be considered in the engineering design or management schemes (e.g., number of birds per feeder or per feed-line space, time allocation in a mealtime feeding scheme). This study aims to systematically evaluate feeding behaviors of poultry, under both nearly natural conditions and various modified conditions as encountered in commercial production situations. Electronic instrumentation systems and an analytical algorithm are used to yield meal size, meal duration, ingestion rate, and meal interval. The first study examined the comparative feeding behaviors of laying hens with or without beak trimming and revealed intriguing results. A second study quantifies feeding behavior of pullets with or without beak trimming during the period subsequent to beak trimming at 7 days of age. The approach may also be used as a non-invasive means to quantify animal welfare

Feeding Behaviors of Laying Hens with or without Beak Trimming

This study quantifies feeding behavior of the W-36 White Leghorn laying hen (77-80 weeks old) as influenced by the management practice of beak trimming. The feeding behavior is characterized by a newly developed measurement system and computational algorithm. Non-trimmed (NT) and beak trimmed (BT) birds showed similar meal size. BT birds spent longer time at the feeder, which is compatible to their slower ingestion rate of 0.9 g/min vs. 1.3 g/min of the NT type. Compared with NT bird, the BT bird had smaller time intervals between meals, 200 vs. 450 s. By scientifically characterizing the feeding behavior of laying hens, baseline information will result that may help better quantify the welfare of birds

Progressive Feeding Behaviors of Pullets with or without Beak Trimming

This study quantifies feeding behavior of W-98 White Leghorn pullets (1-3 weeks old) as influenced by the management practice of beak trimming. The feeding behavior was characterized using a newly developed measurement system and computational algorithm. Beak trimmed (BT) pullets and non-trimmed (NT) pullets exhibited significantly different eating behavior over the ages of 8 to 21 days with regard to meal size and meal duration. Beak-trimmed birds tended to eat larger and longer meals, although the differences between the BT and NT birds were not constant with age (significant interaction between beak type and age, P\u3c0.05). No significant differences across beak types or ages were detected for ingestion rate or interval between meals. The BT and NT pullets had similar amount of daily feeding time (1.1 - 1.2 hr/day). However, the number of meals per day differed, 28 meals/day for the BT pullets vs. 35 meals/day for the NT pullets. Baseline feeding behavior information of this nature may help better quantify and ensure welfare of the animals through exercising proper engineering design or management considerations

Feeding Behaviors of Laying Hens With or Without Beak Trimming

This study quantifies feeding behavior of W-36 White Leghorn laying hens (77 to 80 weeks old) as influenced by the management practice of beak trimming. The feeding behavior was characterized using a newly developed measurement system and computational algorithm. Non-trimmed (NT) and beak-trimmed (BT) hens showed similar daily feed intake and meal size. However, the BT hens tended to spend longer time feeding (3.3 vs. 2.0 h/d, P \u3c 0.01), which coincided with their slower ingestion rate of 0.43 g/min-kg0.75 vs. 0.79 g/min-kg0.75 for the NT counterparts (P \u3c 0.05). The BT hens had shorter time intervals between meals (101 s vs. 151 s, P \u3c 0.01). Selective feeding, as demonstrated by larger feed particles apparent in the leftover feed, was noted for the BT hens. The leftover feed had a lower crude protein/adjusted crude protein content for the BT birds than that for the NT birds (16.7% vs. 18.7%, P \u3c 0.05). In addition, the leftover feed of the BT birds had lower contents in phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, zinc, and manganese (P \u3c 0.05), although no significant differences were detected in calcium, sodium, or metabolic energy content. Baseline feeding behavior data of this nature may help quantify and ensure the welfare of animals through exercising proper engineering design and/or management considerations

The JANUS X-Ray Flash Monitor

JANUS is a NASA small explorer class mission which just completed phase A and was intended for a 2013 launch date. The primary science goals of JANUS are to use high redshift (6<z<12) gamma ray bursts and quasars to explore the formation history of the first stars in the early universe and to study contributions to reionization. The X-Ray Flash Monitor (XRFM) and the Near-IR Telescope (NIRT) are the two primary instruments on JANUS. XRFM has been designed to detect bright X-ray flashes (XRFs) and gamma ray bursts (GRBs) in the 1-20 keV energy band over a wide field of view (4 steradians), thus facilitating the detection of z>6 XRFs/GRBs, which can be further studied by other instruments. XRFM would use a coded mask aperture design with hybrid CMOS Si detectors. It would be sensitive to XRFs/GRBs with flux in excess of approximately 240 mCrab. The spacecraft is designed to rapidly slew to source positions following a GRB trigger from XRFM. XRFM instrument design parameters and science goals are presented in this paper.Comment: submitted to Proc. SPIE, Vol. 7435 (2009), 7 pages, 8 figure

Feeding behaviors of laying hens and pullets with or without beak trimming

Understanding feeding characteristics of animals is of fundamental value to engineering design and management strategies for enhanced well-being and production efficiency. White Leghorn laying hens have a high tendency of feather pecking and cannibalism. Beak trimming has been a management practice used by the U.S. poultry industry to prevent such cannibalism. However, beak trimming may temporarily or permanently alter the feeding behavior of the birds, which may need to be considered in the engineering design or management schemes (e.g., number of birds per feeder or per feed-line space, time allocation in a mealtime feeding scheme). This study aims to systematically evaluate feeding behaviors of poultry, under both nearly natural conditions and various modified conditions as encountered in commercial production situations. Electronic instrumentation systems and an analytical algorithm are used to yield meal size, meal duration, ingestion rate, and meal interval. The first study examined the comparative feeding behaviors of laying hens with or without beak trimming and revealed intriguing results. A second study quantifies feeding behavior of pullets with or without beak trimming during the period subsequent to beak trimming at 7 days of age. The approach may also be used as a non-invasive means to quantify animal welfare.</p

The Sublime Turn Away from Empire: Wordsworth's Encounter with Colonial Slavery, 1802

"The Sublime Turn Away from Empire" argues that the Haitian Revolution—and Toussaint l'Ouverture's role in it—heavily influenced Wordsworth during his early years and that the1802 sonnet to Toussaint l'Ouverture epitomizes the poet's development of the "sublime turn." The Wordsworthian sublime, often interpreted in part as a reaction to the violence of the French Revolution, thus appears in this article as a reaction to the frightening and incomprehensible facts of colonial slavery and revolution—the very realities responsible for L'Ouverture's capture, imprisonment, and eventual death in France's Fort de Joux. In this context, the poet formulates his sublime turn as a turn away from the recognition of material slavery and bondage and toward an imaginative freedom nationed specifically English.In pursuing the argument, the article reviews the history of the Haitian Revolution together with the history of Wordsworth's poetic development from 1790 to 1802. In paying special attention to the 1802 sonnets, the article highlights Wordsworth's juxtaposition of French slavery and English liberty and draws on work by Laura Doyle and Alison Hickey to argue that Wordsworth's valorization of nature and nation has the effect of sublimating his own, and his reader's, recognition of empire and race. Ultimately, though Wordsworth speaks of l'Ouverture in a markedly admiring tone, he counsels him to submit to Napoleonic tyranny anyway—while taking comfort in the material sublime. The article explores this paradox and concludes by postulating that such a contradiction is characteristic of Romantic-era attitudes toward race and the sublime