Effect of social order, perch, and dust-bath allocation on behavior in laying hens

The objective of this study was to determine the effects of different social ranking order (SRO) and the enrichments (perch and dust-bath) allocation (EA) on behavior of laying hens in furnished cages. Total experimental period was 4 weeks. There were 216 Hy-line brown layers beak-trimmed at 1 d of age and selected randomly at 14 weeks of age from a commercial farm, and randomly divided into 36 cages with 6 hens in each cage. High enrichments (perch and dust-bath) allocation (HEA) and low enrichments (perch and dust-bath) allocation (LEA) were provided. Video observations of behavior were obtained from the focal hens between 14 and 18 weeks of age and perching, dust-bathing and other general behaviors of the hens with different social orders were measured. Perching behavior of high SRO hens (HSR) were significantly higher than that of medium SRO hens (MSR), and that of the MSR were significantly higher than that of low SRO hens (LSR) (p0.05). The hens in the high EA cage (HEAC) showed more lying behavior on perch than those in the low EA cage (LEAC) (p