A new approach to gait scoring in broilers

N. Karacay

Department of Animal Science, Ondokuz Mayis University, Samsun, Turkey

Leg weakness problem manifested as reduced walking ability is regarded as one of the most important welfare problems encountered in the modern broiler industry. There are different methods with various modifications in determining the prevalence of leg weakness in live birds. The most common method which can be used for this purpose is ‘Gait Scoring’. Broilers grow fast and are lazy animals due to their higher body weights. They don’t want to walk and spend their spare times sitting down. For this reason, it is difficult to compel them to walk during the gait scoring.

We thought that it is necessary to motivate them for walking by using a powerful reinforcer and this can be accomplished by starving them for a certain period prior to gait scoring. For this purpose, we deprived the broilers (totally 200 broilers) of feed for 10 hours prior to walking ability test. We conducted a runway test in which a group of broilers having their feeds at the feeders were used as reinforcer. Runway consists of a corridor of 3 m (height: 50 cm; width: 100 cm) with sides covered with a cloth to prevent birds from seeing the outside. Each bird was weighed first and then put on the beginning of the runway corridor. The walking ability scores of the birds while they walking towards the birds used as reinforcer by 2 observers using a scoring of 4 points (0-3 points) were determined. We saw that the birds deprived of feed for 10 hours have walked towards the reinforcer group in an effort. We observed that the motivations of females were lower than those of males.

In this paper, this new approach and also the first results from this approach will be introduced.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

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