Research/Dustbath materials for health and welfare in layers
From Poultry Hub
Project Title: Dustbath materials for health and welfare in layers
Project Leader: Birger Svihus at Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) funded by Poultry CRC (Project 03-27)
Duration of Project: Now completed (1 January 2004 to 30 June 2005)
Contents |
Project overview
In Europe, the growing focus on animal welfare in animal production has resulted in new directives requiring more space and the inclusion of dust-bath, nest and perches in all housing systems for layers from 2012.
Project objectives
- The objective of this project was to gain basic knowledge about the nutritional and physiological consequences for layers with access to different types of materials for dust bathing and the nature of layers’ interactions with feed structure.
Project progress
This project has been completed and the Final Report is available from the Poultry CRC (ISBN: 1 921010 11 8).
This project demonstrated that access to litter materials affects nutritional physiology. More specifically, coarse and hard litter components can play a beneficial role for nutrient digestion and gut health, while soft litter particles do not stimulate digestion or nutrient utilisation. This phenomenon can be applied to commercial optimisation of feed and housing environments. A follow-up project investigating the role of voluntary litter consumption by broiler chickens on gut function and gut health is now underway.
