Broiler Flock Observation Report Day 15-28

When observing the flock over these two weeks, I noticed a few interesting things in respect to the variables used in this experiment. In respect to lighting, I noticed that the birds in the brighter pens were a lot more active than birds in the dark pens. The birds in the light pens were almost always up eating or drinking, and even when they were laying down, they were picking in the litter. They very seldom actually slept. Even when some tried to sleep, other birds who were up would accidentally wake up the sleeping birds. In respect to stocking density, I noticed that birds in low stocking densities got to sleep more and had more restful sleep than birds in high stocking density pens. In low densities, birds can spread out so that, even if one bird shifts a little bit or gets up to eat or drink, it can do so without disturbing the other birds. In high densities, any little shift of one bird or if one bird gets up, it sends ‘shock waves’ through the rest of the flock and wakes the rest of the flock up. The result is that low stocking density birds get to lay down and sleep undisturbed for a long time while high stocking density birds can barely doze off without being woken up. In respect to sex, the differences were not very noticeable. Males seemed to be slightly more active than females but other than that, the activities of the females seemed to be the same as the activities of the males.