review of the social and environmental factors affecting the behavior and welfare of turkeys meleagris gallopavo

ABSTRACT In modern rearing systems, turkey producers often face economic losses due to increased aggression, feather pecking, cannibalism, leg disorders, or injuries among birds, which are also significant welfare issues. The main underlying causes appear to relate to rapid growth, flock size, density, poor environmental complexity, or lighting, which may be deficient in providing the birds with an adequate physical or social environment. To date, there is little information regarding the effect of these factors on turkey welfare. This knowledge is, however, essential to ensure the welfare of turkeys and to improve their quality of life, but may also be beneficial to industry, allowing better bird performance, improved carcass quality, and reduced mortality and condemnations. This paper reviews the available scientific literature related to the behavior of turkeys as influenced by the physical and social environment that may be relevant to advances toward turkey production systems that take welfare into consideration. We addressed the effects that factors such as density, group size, space availability, maturation, lightning, feeding, and transport may have over parameters that may be relevant to ensure welfare of turkeys. Available scientific studies were based in experimental environments and identified individual factors corresponding to particular welfare problems. Most of the studies aimed at finding optimal levels of rearing conditions that allow avoiding or decreasing most severe welfare issues. This paper discusses the importance of these factors for development of production environments that would be better suited from a welfare and economic point of view

Welfare assessment in broiler farms : transect walks versus individual scoring

Absolute yields of negative ions and secondary electrons resulting from positive ions impacting a stainless steel surface have been determined as a function of the impact energy. The surface conditions range from those commonly found in situ for discharge electrodes to a surface free of any adsorbate. The implications of these findings to discharge modeling are discussed

Achados patológicos e imuno-histoquímicos em bovinos com doença granulomatosa sistêmica pelo consumo de Vicia villosa (Leg. Papilionoideae) no Rio Grande do Sul

A doença granulomatosa sistêmica associada ao consumo de Vicia villosa (Leg. Papilionoideae) foi diagnosticada em 5 bovinos no período de 2005 a 2008. Os bovinos apresentavam alopecia, lesões crostosas na pele, prurido, febre, queda da produção leiteira, anorexia e emagrecimento. O curso clínico médio da doença foi de 2 semanas. Dos bovinos analisados três morreram e dois foram eutanasiados. As lesões macroscópicas de alopecia e crostas na pele eram localizadas principalmente na face e pescoço. Observava-se nódulos multifocais a coalescentes branco-acinzentados que infiltravam vários órgãos especialmente em linfonodos, rins e coração. As lesões microscópicas consistiam na infiltração de linfócitos, macrófagos, células epitelioides, células gigantes multinucleadas, eosinófilos e plasmócitos. Linfonodos, rins, adrenal, baço e fígado de todos os bovinos apresentaram infiltrado granulomatoso, porém de intensidade variável. Nos testes imuno-histoquímicos dos órgãos com infiltrado inflamatório, as principais células visualizadas foram os linfócitos T, seguidos de macrófagos/células epitelioides/células gigantes multi-nucleadas e os linfócitos B foram raramente detectados nos locais de inflamação granulomatosa. O número reduzido de células marcadas por Ki-67 nas lesões granulomatosas, tende a indicar que a proliferação celular não foi responsável pela hipercelularidade das lesões e que o recrutamento de macrófagos e linfócitos para o local da inflamação provavelmente tenha sido o responsável pelo acúmulo de células no infiltrado inflamatório

Turkeys in an app: facilitating practical on-farm welfare and health assessment of commercial turkeys

Welfare assessment protocols must be science based and reliable, but also they must be practical for on-farm application. In this regard, protocols that are simple to implement and easy to understand by farmers and technical staf[ are more likely to be understood, adopted, and ultimately become a relevant tool [or guiding the companies' decision making processo Onfarm welfare assessment in commerciai meat poultry is particularly challenging because of the large number of individuals composing the flocks. Current available protocols for meat poultry requires catching and bird handling, resulting in a procedure that is time, manpower demanding, expensive and dangerous for birds and humans in the case of turkey assessment. However, farmers and flock supervisors in turkey production conduct daily routine checks based on walks through the production houses. These screenings allow individuais with visible severe problems to be identified, providing an estimation of the flock health and welfare status with minimai disruption to the birds. The new turkey protocoi based on the transect approach method ofassessment provides the dynamism ofthe walk-through inspections, but is conducted in a way that provides veracity, and inter-observer reliability. The transect method for turkey welfare assessment consisted of standardized walks through which the frequency of birds observed showing any of the predefined welfare indicators are collected and results standardized according to the actual population size. Transect walks allowed the detection of small variations in the prevalence of most welfare indicators considered across houses, while showing high inter-observer reliability. The results obtained in the turkey study provi de supporting evidence that the transect approach is a simple, but reliable, method of on-farm welfare assessment. The method has the advantage of being readily acceptable and easy to implement by producers, while maintaining high inter-observer reliability, and requiring minimum training. The i-WatchTurkey app specifically developed for on-farm turkey welfare assessment allows easy assessment of the incidence of the most relevant welfare indicators in a simple manner at the time of regular health inspection

Review of the social and environmental factors affecting the behavior and welfare of turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo)

In modern rearing systems, turkey producers often face economic losses due to increased aggression, feather pecking, cannibalism, leg disorders, or injuries among birds, which are also significant welfare issues. The main underlying causes appear to relate to rapid growth, flock size, density, poor environmental complexity, or lighting, which may be deficient in providing the birds with an adequate physical or social environment. To date, there is little information regarding the effect of these factors on turkey welfare. This knowledge is, however, essential to ensure the welfare of turkeys and to improve their quality of life, but may also be beneficial to industry, allowing better bird performance, improved carcass quality, and reduced mortality and condemnations. This paper reviews the available scientific literature related to the behavior of turkeys as influenced by the physical and social environment that may be relevant to advances toward turkey production systems that take welfare into consideration. We addressed the effects that factors such as density, group size, space availability, maturation, lightning, feeding, and transport may have over parameters that may be relevant to ensure welfare of turkeys. Available scientific studies were based in experimental environments and identified individual factors corresponding to particular welfare problems. Most of the studies aimed at finding optimal levels of rearing conditions that allow avoiding or decreasing most severe welfare issues. This paper discusses the importance of these factors for development of production environments that would be better suited from a welfare and economic point of view