A Novel Model to Explain Extreme Feather Pecking Behavior in Laying Hens

Feather pecking (FP) is a serious economic and welfare problem in the domestic fowl. It has recently been shown that the distribution of FP bouts within groups is heterogeneous and contains a sub-population of extreme feather peckers (EFP). The present study proposed a novel model to detect EFP hens...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavior genetics 2020, Vol.50 (1), p.41-50
Main Authors: Iffland, H., Wellmann, R., Preuß, S., Tetens, J., Bessei, W., Piepho, H.-P., Bennewitz, J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Birds
Clinical Psychology
Fear
Fear & phobias
Genes
Genetic diversity
Health Psychology
Heritability
Mood
Original Research
Pecking behavior
Psychology
Public Health
Tonic immobility
Welfare
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Feather pecking (FP) is a serious economic and welfare problem in the domestic fowl. It has recently been shown that the distribution of FP bouts within groups is heterogeneous and contains a sub-population of extreme feather peckers (EFP). The present study proposed a novel model to detect EFP hens. A mixture of two negative binomial distributions was fitted to FP data of a F 2 cross of about 960 hens, and, based on the results, a calculation of the posterior probability for each hen belonging to the EFP subgroup (pEFP) was done. The fit of the mixture distribution revealed that the EFP subgroup made up a proportion of one third of the F 2 cross. The EFP birds came more frequently into pecking mood and showed higher pecking intensities compared to the remaining birds. Tonic immobility and emerge box tests were conducted at juvenile and adult age of the hens to relate fearfulness to EFP. After dichotomization, all traits were analyzed in a multivariate threshold model and a genomewide association study was performed. The new trait pEFP has a medium heritability of 0.35 and is positively correlated with the fear traits. Breeding for this new trait could be an interesting option to reduce the proportion of extreme feather peckers. An index of fear related traits might serve as a proxy to breed indirectly for pEFP. GWAS revealed that all traits are typical quantitative traits with many genes and small effects contributing to the genetic variance.
ISSN:0001-8244
1573-3297
DOI:10.1007/s10519-019-09971-w