How does a robot improve poultry behavior?

Pecking, laying on the ground, penning, brooding… you must find solutions to these behaviors on a daily basis. The poultry robot is perfectly in line with this approach, in particular by promoting egg-laying in the nest and ticking.

1. The importance of environmental enrichment.

The world of poultry farming is changing! Today, the fact of enriching the environment seems more and more necessary, and this for more than one reason.

- An essential consideration of animal welfare:

Poultry that evolve in an environment without any distractions are bored. A vicious circle then sets in: they attack each other, are more fearful and lethargic, eat less well, etc.

At a time when animal welfare is taking center stage, it seems that environmental enrichment is essential. On the regulatory side, it is in fact very likely, under European influence, that beak trimming will soon be banned, as is the case in Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany or even for French breeders exporting their eggs to these countries. The use of electric fencing to limit egg-laying to the ground should also be prohibited in a few years.

Manufacturers are also moving in this direction. Brands such as Carrefour, Leclerc, Magasins U, Intermarché, Lidl and many others have committed to the Better Chicken Commitment, an initiative supported by nearly thirty European animal protection NGOs. The objective is clear: to only use suppliers who respect animal welfare standards, for example by using perches.

This movement leads to the appearance on the market of new innovations, such as T-Moov, the poultry robot which won an Innov'Space in 2016 or Perch'up, a single-use compostable perch which won an Innov'Space in 2019.

- Enrich the environment and constantly create new things:

Upside-down basins on which to make noise when pecking, bales of straw, pieces of string, pecking blocks, perches… all these solutions bring complexity to the environment, which helps the poultry to express their natural behaviors and reduce stress.

However, scientific works agree on the fact that it is not only a question of proposing animations, but also of introducing variety. In a 2004 study titled "Making the Chicken Walk: Why and How?" “, INRA already explained that “[…] The daily introduction of a totally new object in a peripheral area induces a strong motivation in hens to enter the adjacent area and explore the new object”.

Since then, INRA has again worked on the subject of environmental enrichment, within the framework of tests carried out with ITAVI (Poultry Institute) and ANSES (National Food Safety Agency). , environment and work) as part of the Casdar Épointage project. After tests carried out during the rearing phase and then during laying, it was found that interest in enrichments deteriorated over time.

In its recommendations to limit severe pecking, ITAVI therefore recommends making different enrichments available to poultry and renewing them frequently, while recommending starting early (from the pullet stage for maximum efficiency).

2. The poultry robot, a new solution to enrich the environment.

The advantage of the poultry robot lies not only in its ability to animate batches, but also in the possibility of varying the stimuli to introduce change on a regular basis.

- What does a poultry robot do to provide animation?

It's very simple: it moves around the building, randomly and autonomously. His passage intrigues the poultry, while encouraging them to move. The hens jump to go to the nest or have fun following it. They also take more dust baths.

The interest lies in the stimulation of the animals, and in the fact that the robot was designed to limit the habituation of the poultry:

“As we work on living things, the stimulation of poultry is a complex subject: some strains move very naturally, while it is more difficult to make others move. There are also particularities related to the building, the environment, the breeder's practices... For the robot to be effective, we worked with the Ethos laboratory of the University of Rennes. We tested a lot of things for the stimuli: clicking sounds, high-pitched sounds, or even white noise. There is no such thing as a magic sound, but the important thing today is that the breeder has a range of stimuli, because stimulation goes a lot through surprise. In practice, the poultry robot can therefore be configured in a different way, so that the poultry discover new features as they come. You are thus free to adjust the sounds (different types and different intensities), the light (color and intensity), the speed at which the robot evolves, or the insistence on pushing the hens. A flag kit also allows you to create additional animation.

- Results on the problem of spawning on the ground:

When they are not stimulated, the hens have an annoying tendency to lay on the ground. Of course, there are techniques like placing fake eggs in the nest, but the robot goes further. By tirelessly disturbing the hens on the ground thanks to the variety of his stimuli, he encourages them to lay in the nest. In this field, the results are there: while they made a passage every half hour in their building, the T-Moov users were all able to reduce their comings and goings and notice a drop in the laying rate. on the ground, this being divided by 4 or 5.

- Better fertility:

The poultry robot also improves ticking. A study conducted with the Hubbard company in 2020 has indeed proven its positive impact on the libido of roosters, knowing that it at the same time lowers the refusal rate in females. Experimentation has shown that ticking attempts increase by 30% when a breeder uses our T-Moov robot. There is also a fertility gain, reaching up to +5 points.

When it comes to brooding behavior in turkeys, producers use the robot and its ability to repeatedly push the brooding turkey to the ground. The action is effective. According to them, they have almost no more incubators.

3. Healthy poultry thanks to the poultry robot.

Animal health presents a high level of complexity and requires good control of feeding, care or breeding conditions. The robot does not intervene in all of these areas, but contributes to the animals adopting better behaviors.

- Physical exercise for poultry:

Because it disturbs the animals, the robot pushes them to move. This makes it easier for them to move to feeders and waterers. In addition to the daily mass gain and the optimization of food consumption, the robot also contributes to maintaining a healthy environment. Its passage encourages the poultry to scratch the litter, which promotes its aeration. All these benefits combined mean that the animals are in good health and less exposed to pathologies such as locomotor disorders, blisters, breast burns or even tarsal burns.

For the breeder, this means a lower seizure rate. On this point, a study was conducted in November 2019 in a Canadian farm of 4000 male meat turkeys. The percentage of meat without defects increased from 17.87% to 49.73% with the use of the robot. The foreclosure rate fell from 3.41% to 2.11%.

- Less aggressive poultry:

To detect pecking phenomena, ITAVI recommends observing the animals while standing still for 5 to 10 minutes in different places in the building and paying attention to the vocalizations of the victim hens. Body condition should be assessed frequently, starting with the condition of the plumage, head and neck, back, belly and vent.

To measure T-Moov's interest in pecking, our teams also conducted an experiment there, in partnership with the CNRS and the Ethos laboratory. Here are the results of this test, conducted for 18 weeks on 1800 individuals (laying strain):

• without a robot, the quality of the plumage is between 2 and 4, with an average of 3 (see the photo scale).

• with a robot, it varies between 1 and 3, with an average of 2.

Certainly, the poultry robot therefore improves the behavior of poultry.