Working for food is related to range use in free-range broiler chickens.

ABSTRACT: When animals prefer to make efforts to obtain food instead of acquiring it from freely available sources, they exhibit what is called contrafreeloading. Recently, individual differences in behavior, such as exploration, were shown to be linked to how prone an individual may be to contrafreeload. In this work, our main objective was to test whether and how individual differences in range use of free-range broiler chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) were related to the individual motivation to contrafreeload. We also verified whether other behavioral variations could relate to range use. To that aim, over three different periods (before range access, first weeks of range access, and last weeks of range access), chickens with different ranging levels (low and high rangers) were submitted to a

SUBMITTER: Ferreira VHB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7973526 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature