The Rural Voice, 1992-02, Page 24important, and it can be overcome by
seeing how hard an animal will work
to get or avoid something. In such an
experiment, I. J. H. Duncan and V. G.
Kite taught chickens to use nesting
boxes, and then placed annoying
things like air blasts and foot baths in
the way to see how determined the
birds were to use them. They found
that the chickens were
"highly motivated" to reach
the boxes, a motivation
equivalent to the determina-
tion they exhibit to reach
food after being without it
for 20 hours. Marian
Stamp Dawkins and
Christine Nicol describe a
French experiment in which
hens were placed in a cage
with one moveable wall.
The wall moved outwards
whcn the hcns pecked at a
key, and moved back in
when they stopped. The
birds pecked at the key at
"a rate which kept the wall
well away from them, giv-
ing each hen at least 625
square centimetres."
The example given by
Dawkins and Nicol was
included in a discussion of
the amount of space allo-
cated to laying hens by the
European Commission, and
it illustrates how research
into animal welfare is be-
ginning to conflict with
many of the industry standards.
European chickens must now have
a minimum of 450 square centimetres
of floor space. Using a video camera
and a computer analyzer, Dawkins
and Sylvie Hardie measured the
amount of space the birds occupy
when involved in a range of activi-
ties, including standing still. Ross
Brown hens weighing two kilograms
take up 428 to 592 square centimetres
standing still. They occupy 978 to
1626 square centimetres turning
around, and 1085 to 2060 square cen-
timetres flapping their wings. Quot-
ing British Ministry of Agriculture,
Food, and Fisheries guidelines which
say farm animals must be given "free-
dom of movement" and "the opportu-
nity to exercise most normal patterns
of behaviour," Dawkins and Nicol
say it "is clear from our study that
450 square centimetres comes no-
where near giving hens the opportu-
nity to preen, turn around, flap their
wings, or even just stand in any way
that could be described as `freely'."
Dawkins and Nicol found that
hens essentially stop trying to move
work hard to gain access to soil for
rooting, and prefer to spend time in
stalls with other pigs beside them.
Stereotypic behaviour in tethered
sows can be eliminated by ensuring
that they have no food restrictions, as
the behaviour arises from frustrated
foraging instincts in the hungry pig.
New types of housing — which
meet more of the animal's
needs and improve its
welfare — are therefore
necessary, and much re-
search is being conducted
into improved designs.
However, this is proving
to be nearly as difficult as
determining which beha-
viours are needs in the
first place, because not
only must the housing
improve the animal's wel-
fare, but it must also be
economically efficient.
Improving welfare does
not mean throwing out ex-
isting technology. The
cages now in use do have
definite good points, be-
cause they were designed
to meet very basic welfare
standards. A battery cage
in a controlled environ-
ment is hard to beat when
it comes to matters of dis-
ease control and clear ac-
cess to food. In an article
discussing improved
"in any fashion" when kept in battery
cages. There have been suggestions
that, under these conditions, hens for-
get how to be active, but Dawkins
and Nicol say that when a hen is re-
leased from its cage "it begins to
stretch and flap its wings at a very
high rate; it is still highly motivated
to exercise."
These types of findings are being
published with increasing frequency.
It is clear that as well as needing food
and water, hens appear to need perch-
es, dust baths, and mouldable nesting
material in a larger cage in order to be
considered healthy. A plaything
keeps piglets happy and reduces ag-
gressive behaviour, while sows need
well -bedded farrowing areas with
three to four walls. Pigs will also
housing for chickens,
Christine Nicol and Marian Stamp
Dawkins say that some of the current
alternatives to the cages are in fact
worse for the chickens. Some free-
range systems have a large number of
birds housed in a central region. In-
explicably, few birds venture out of
this crowded place. Nicol and Daw-
kins speculate it may be because the
birds can't find the exits, or they are
prevented from leaving by dominant
birds. Or it may be that "the outside
has little to offer." Most free-range
systems apparently provide grass in-
stead of the dense vegetation that
chickens prefer, so "all too often the
result is a patch of mud near the
house, and overgrown, unused grass
further away."
In order to better meet a chicken's
20 THE RURAL VOICE