Supplementary Files
Keywords
pollo de engorde
granjas comerciales
primera semana de vida
comportamiento
Animal welfare
broiler
commercial farms
the first week of life
behavior
Abstract
The aspects that compose animal welfare are complex and multidimensional. The first week of life is critical in the development of chickens; the welfare problems in this period are the result of accumulation of factors that compromise the individual animal and the flock. The objective of this work was to identify environmental, housing, health, and behavioral indicators to know their relationship with chickens´ welfare on commercial farms during the first week of life. The effect of multiple indicators on welfare variables was studied: mortality, selection, body temperature, lameness, scratches, and pododermatitis. Principal component analysis (PC) was performed to reduce the complexity of the factors studied. Correlation and regression analyses were performed with PC as regressive variables to understand the relationships between PC and animal welfare variables. 15 houses from 15 commercial farms, located in the north and central zone of Costa Rica were evaluated from January to July 2019. The analysis reduced the complexity of the indicators to seven variables: production, disease, skin and leg integrity, density, resources, environment, and behavior. The PC that best described variability in welfare were behavior, skin and leg integrity, density, disease, and resources. The models that best explained the relationships were those including PC production and health, housing and behavior, health and housing, density and behavior, disease, and housing. The wet litter showed significant differences (p<0.05) in the welfare variables; however, most of the evaluated farms showed good skin and leg integrity scores. The principal components approach allowed the identification of the main effects that affected broiler´s welfare on the farms during the first week of age: heating, litter quality, disease, resource availability, environment, and motivational behaviors. It also allowed farm classification according to their degree of association with health variables.
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