Effect of different litter material on performance and behaviorof broiler chickens

Majid Toghyani a,*, Abasali Gheisari b, Mehrdad Modaresi a, Sayed Ali Tabeidian a,Mehdi Toghyani c

a Department of Animal Science, Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan (Esfahan) Branch, Eastern Jey Street, Esfahan, Iranb Department of Animal Science, Esfahan Agricultural Research Center, Esfahan, Iranc Young Researchers Club of Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan Branch, Esfahan, Iran

Applied Animal Behaviour Science 122 (2010) 48–52

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Accepted 11 November 2009

Available online 6 December 2009

Keywords:

Broiler

Litter

Performance

Antibody titer

Behavior

A B S T R A C T

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of alternative litter materials

on growth performance and behaviors of broiler chicks. Chicks were raised from 1 to 42

days of age, during the summer with an average temperature of 31 8C. In experiment 1,

three hundred broilers (Ross 308) were randomly assigned to one of 20 floor pens. There

were four replicates for each of the following five litter treatments: (1) no litter, (2) wood

shaving, (3) sand, (4) rice hulls and (5) recycled paper roll. Results showed broilers reared

on rice hulls had significantly lower body weight, feed intake and antibody titer (P< 0.05).

Litter materials had no significant influence on feed conversion, carcass yield, abdominal

fat, gizzard, intestine, ceca and lymphoid organs expressed as a percentage of body weight.

In experiment 2, four pens were divided into four quarters and bedded with sand, wood

shavings, rice hulls and paper roll. Birds (20/pen) were observed, ten times a day and one

day per week from weeks 2 to 6. The birds spent 49% of their time in the sand side, 19% in

the wood shavings, 18% in the paper roll and 13% in the rice hulls. The proportion of the

total time budget spent dustbathing was greater on the sand side. The time spent sitting

was also higher in the sand and wood shavings. Walking was greater on the rice hulls and

paper roll but foraging was lower on the rice hulls. These results indicate that broilers

reared on floor (no litter), sand and paper roll performed as well as those reared on wood

shavings and when given a choice, broilers spent a greater proportion of their total time in

sand and performed a greater proportion of their behaviors on sand.

� 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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Applied Animal Behaviour Science

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1. Introduction

Wood shavings and sawdust are the most commonmaterials used as litter in commercial broiler production inmany areas. Low supplies, high cost, and unavailability ofsuitable materials have encouraged the search for alter-native litter materials. A variety of paper products (Malone

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 913 314 1302; fax: +98 311 5354038.

E-mail address: toghiani@hotmail.com (M. Toghyani).

0168-1591/$ – see front matter � 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2009.11.008

et al., 1982, 1983; Lien et al., 1992), gypsum (Grimes et al.,2006), hardwood bark (Brake et al., 1992), kenaf (Malone etal., 1990), peanut hulls (Lien et al., 1998), sand (Billgilliet al., 1999a,b; Shields et al., 2005), rice hulls (Veltmann etal., 1984), rice hull ash (Chamblee and Yeatman, 2003), riceand wheat straw (Benabdeljelil and Ayachi, 1996), soft-wood chipping fines (Parsons and Baker, 1985), leaves(Willis et al., 1997) refused tea (Atapattu and Wickrama-singhe, 2007) ground corncob, chopped corn stalk andsoybean straw (de Avila et al., 2008) have occasionallybeen used as substitute bedding materials with various

M. Toghyani et al. / Applied Animal Behaviour Science 122 (2010) 48–52 49

degrees of success. Recently in Iran many farmers prefer torear broilers on the floor (no litter) in summer or onrecycled paper roll as a new litter.

Bedding type can significantly affect growth perfor-mance and carcass quality of broilers (Billgilli et al., 1999b;Malone et al., 1983). Litter type affects litter consumptionand litter bacteria (Malone et al., 1983; Lien et al., 1992),thus may affect body weight and immunity of broilerchicks. Factors which can influence the efficiency of a typeof litter include particle size, moisture content andbuildup, rate of caking, and other physical characteristicsof the material used.

Bedding substrate stimulates particular behaviors ofbroiler chickens. Sand appears to be one such potentialsubstrate. Broilers that are deprived of bedding andsubsequently given a choice between sand and pine woodshavings choose to dustbathe and forage more in sand thanin any of the other substrates (Shields et al., 2004, 2005).When sand-filled trays are placed in pens, broilersdustbathe and forage preferentially in the sand ratherthan in the wood shavings covering the pen floor (Arnouldet al., 2004). However, there are little data about behaviorsof broilers reared on other litter materials.

The objectives of these two experiments presented herewere to evaluate growth performance and behaviors ofmale broiler chicks when using different material as abedding source.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Experiment 1

Three hundred one-day-old male broiler chicks (Ross308) were allocated to five treatments in a completelyrandomized design. The treatments consisted of no litter(cement floor) or four different bedding types: woodshavings, rice hulls, recycled paper roll, and sand. The penswere filled to a depth of 3 cm with sand, wood shavings,rice hulls or recycled paper roll having a thickness of 2 mm.Each treatment was randomly allocated within the housein floor pens of 15 chicks each (10 birds/m2). Chicks wereraised from 1 to 42 days of age, during the summer in July–August with an average temperature of 31 8C. Each pencontained a waterer (bell drinker) and feeder (troughfeedrer). All chicks received corn-soybean meal diet in athree-stage feeding program, which consisted of a starter(21.5% CP, 2810 kcal ME/kg), grower (21% CP, 2980 kcalME/kg) and finisher (20% CP, 3050 kcal ME/kg).

Feed and water were provided ad libitum. No antibioticsor coccidiostats were administered. The lighting programwas 23 h light and 1 h dark. Body weight, feed consumptionand feed conversion were determined for each pen at 14, 28and 42 days. Mortality was recorded daily.

All chicks were intramuscularly immunized with akilled vaccine of Newcastle and Avian Influenza (H9 N2)viruses at age of 8 days. On day 18 and 28 blood sampleswere collected from the wing vein of two birds perreplicate and serum antibody titers against Newcastle andInfluenza viruses in serum were determined by haemag-glutination inhibition (HI) test and were expressed as thelogarithm base 2.

At 42 days of age two birds were chosen randomly fromeach pen, slaughtered and the abdominal fat, gizzard,proventriculus, intestine, ceca and lymphoid organs suchas spleen and bursa of Fabricius were collected, weighedand expressed as a percentage of live body weight.

2.2. Experiment 2

Eighty male broiler chicks (Ross 308) were used in thisexperiment. At day 1 of age, the chicks were randomlyassigned to four different treatment pens. Each pen wasdivided into four quarters bedded with wood shavings, ricehulls, sand, and paper roll. The pens were filled to a depthof 2 cm with sand, wood shavings, rice hulls, or recycledpaper roll with thickness of 2 mm. The location of the 4substrates was alternated in the pens. Each pen measured240 cm� 240 cm was equipped with separate drinkers(bell drinker) and feeders (trough feeder), on each litter.Feed and water were available ad libitum. The lightingprogram was 23 h light and 1 h dark. The same diets wereused in experiment 1.

Behavioral observations were conducted one day perweek starting when the chicks reached 7 days of age andcontinued through 42 days of age. The behavioral datawere recorded via overhead video cameras fitted in eachpen, over ten 1 h periods per day (from 09:00 to 12:00 hand from 13:00 to 20:00 h). For each 1 h period six scan,were taken 5 min apart. The behaviors were dividedinto: Eating, drinking, preening, dustbathing, pecking,scratching, walking, lying, standing, sitting, perching andaggression. To express each behavioral score as aproportion of the total behavior performed in a givenday and pen, the behavioral score on each substrate wasthen divided by the total score for all the behaviors inthat pen for that day. Dividing each behavioral score bythe total possible behavioral score created a populationtime budget that could then be subjected to statisticalanalysis.

2.3. Statistical analysis

Analysis were performed with the SAS software (SAS,1997) using the General Linear Model procedures.Significant differences (P< 0.05) among treatment meanswere determined using the Duncan multiple range test.

3. Results

3.1. Experiment 1

The effects of different bedding types on theperformance of broilers are summarized in Table 1.Body weight of broilers at 42 days was significantly(P< 0.05) affected by the litter type. Broilers grown onthe rice hulls litter had the lowest body weightcompared to other litters. The feed intake of broilersreared on rice hulls was significantly lower than otherlitters (P< 0.05). The highest feed intake was belongedto broilers reared on no litter or sand.

There were no significant (P> 0.05) differences in feedconversion and mortality. Percentage of proventriculus to

Table 1

Effect of different litter materials on performance of broiler chicks

averaged over all growth period.

Litter treatments Body

weight (g)

Feed intake

(g/bird/d)

Feed

conversion

(g:g)

Mortality

(%)

No litter 2129 a 84.2 a 1.70 a 2.4 a

Wood shaving 2091 a 82.3 ab 1.69 a 2 a

Rice hulls 2017 b 78.9 b 1.69 a 2.8 a

Paper roll 2072 a 82.1 ab 1.71 a 2.3 a

Sand 2116 a 83.1 ab 1.69 a 1.8 a

SEM 19.3 2.21 0.03 1.62

Significance * * NS NS

a,bMeans within the column with no common superscripts differ

significantly; NS: not significant.* P< 0.05.

Table 4

Effect of different litter material on antibody titer against Newcastle and

influenza viruses at different ages.

Litter treatment Newcastle

(log2 HI titer)

Influenza

(log2 HI titer)

18 days 28 days 18 days 28 days

No litter 4.12 a 5.25 a 3.87 a 5.38 a

Wood shaving 3.25 ab 5.12 a 3.62 a 5.12 a

Rice hulls 2.37 b 4.62 a 3.25 a 4.38 a

Paper roll 3.00 b 4.88 a 3.88 a 5.50 a

Sand 4.25 a 4.71 a 4.12 a 5.00 a

SEM 0.586 0.921 0.856 0.741

Significance * NS NS NS

a,bMeans within the column with no common superscripts differ

significantly; NS: not significant.* P< 0.05.

M. Toghyani et al. / Applied Animal Behaviour Science 122 (2010) 48–5250

live weight was significantly affected by litter type(P< 0.05) but no significant differences were foundfor carcass, abdominal fat, gizzard, intestine and ceca(Table 2). Broilers reared on no litter or rice hulls hadthe lower proventriculus weight than other litters(P< 0.05) and were not significantly different from eachother. Also percentage of gizzard and intestine were notsignificantly different but tended to decrease in broilersreared on no litter or rice hulls and increase in woodshaving.

Percentage of lymphoid organ (spleen and bursa ofFabricius) of live weight were not significantly affected bylitter type (Table 3). However the weight of bursa ofFabricius was not significantly lower in broilers reared onrice hulls than other litters.

Effect of the different bedding types on antibody titeragainst Newcastle and Influenza vaccine are presented inTable 4. The antibody titer against Newcastle vaccine at 18days was significantly affected by litter type. Broilersreared on the rice hulls had significantly lower antibodytiter than on sand. Antibody titer against Newcastle at 28

Table 2

Carcass traits of broiler chickens (percentage of live weight) reared using diffe

Litter

treatments

Carcass Abdominal

fat

Prove

No litter 76.6 a 2.35 a 0.309

Wood shaving 75.9 a 2.31 a 0.337

Rice hulls 76.3 a 2.49 a 0.311

Paper roll 75.6 a 2.11 a 0.359

Sand 75.5 a 2.29 a 0.354

SEM 1.85 0.345 0.019

Significance NS NS *

a,bMeans within the column with no common superscripts differ significantly;* P< 0.05.

Table 3

Lymphoid organs of broiler chickens (percentage of live weight) reared using d

Lymphoid organs No litter Wood shaving Rice hulls

Spleen 0.146 a 0.147 a 0.177 a

Bursa of Fabricius 0.081 a 0.077 a 0.052 a

NS: not significant.

days and Influenza at 18 and 28 days tended to decrease inbroilers reared on rice hulls.

3.2. Experiment 2

Comparing the change in behavior between the fourbedding types showed a significant (P< 0.05) difference indrinking, feeding, foraging, preening, sitting, locomotion,dustbathing, and perching behaviors on the four differentbeddings (Table 5).

There was a significant decrease in locomotion behavioron sand and wood shavings whereas sitting increased. Thebirds sat more on sand and wood shavings rather than onrice hulls and the paper roll (P< 0.05). Perching behaviorpeaked during weeks 3 and it was the highest for rice hullsand lowest for sand. Foraging behavior decreased in therice hulls side of the pen but was higher on the other litters.The drinking behavior tended to increase on the paper rollside of the pen. Dustbathing and preening were performedrespectively more on sand and wood shavings rather onthe other bedding types (P< 0.01).

rent litter materials (measured at 42 days of age).

ntriculus Gizzard Intestine Ceca

b 2.14 a 3.08 a 0.711 a

ab 2.42 a 3.76 a 0.699 a

b 2.25 a 3.18 a 0.704 a

a 2.36 a 3.43 a 0.666 a

a 2.35 a 3.53 a 0.718 a

0. 260 0.542 0.015

NS NS NS

NS: not significant.

ifferent litter materials (measured at 42 days of age).

Paper roll Sand SEM Significance

0.152 a 0.185 a 0.075 NS

0.079 a 0.072 a 0.046 NS

Table 5

Overall distribution of behaviors on each side of the pen as shown by the proportion of total behavioral time budget for each behavior.

Treatment behaviorc Wood shavings Sand Rice hulls Paper roll Significance

Drink 1.7 c 1.6 c 3.2 b 6 a *

Feed 9.5 b 16.1 a 16.4 a 11.7 b *

Forage 9.2 a 9.6 a 6.5 b 10.6 a *

Preen 7.8 a 3.8 b 4.1 b 4.6 b *

Stretch 2.4 a 0.7 a 1.2 a 2.4 a NS

Stand 3.7 a 3.4 a 5.3 a 5.2 a NS

Sit 46.3 a 47.4 a 35.9 b 35.6 b *

Locomotion 3.3 b 2.9 b 7.8 a 9.3 a *

Dustbathe 3.7 a 0.3 b 0.2 b 0.8 b **

Lie 9.8 a 9.4 a 13.4 a 10 a NS

Perch 2.6 b 4.7 ab 6 a 3.8 b *

a,bMeans within the row with no common superscripts differ significantly, NS: not significant.c % of total behavior.* P< 0.05.** P< 0.01.

M. Toghyani et al. / Applied Animal Behaviour Science 122 (2010) 48–52 51

The standing, stretching and lying behaviors were notaffected significantly by litter type.

In the over all growth period the birds spent 49% of theirtime in the sand side, 19% in the wood shavings, 18% in thepaper roll and 13% in the rice hulls.

4. Discussion

4.1. Experiment 1

In the present study broilers reared on rice hulls had thelowest body weight in comparison to others litter (Table 1).The observed differences in body weight may be attributedto depression of feed intake in birds reared on rice hullsand increasing feed intake on others litter especially onfloor (no litter). Billgilli et al. (1999a) reported incomparison to broilers reared on pine shavings, broilersreared on sand had significantly higher body weights. Thebeneficial effects of certain types of litter material (news-paper) on body weight have been reported by Malone et al.(1982). Many studies in which alternative materials weretested have reported that the type of litter material useddoes not affect body weight (Lien et al., 1992; Burke et al.,1993; Grimes et al., 2006; de Avila et al., 2008). Feedconversion and mortality of broilers in this experimentwere not affected by litter type (Table 1). Other researchershave reported similar findings regarding the influence ofvarious litter material on feed conversion and mortality(Burke et al., 1993; Willis et al., 1997; Grimes et al., 2006;Atapattu and Wickramasinghe, 2007).

The results of this experiment with respect to lowerweight of proventriculus and gizzard in no litter or ricehulls and no differences in carcass and abdominal fat bylitter type are in agreement with findings of Billgilli et al.(1999b) who reported carcass yield and abdominal fatwere not affected by litter type but gizzard weresignificantly higher for birds reared on pine shaving. Theyobserved that birds reared on pine shavings had higherclean gizzard weights and gizzard contents. Broilers rearedon wood shavings or sawdust has been shown to havelarger gizzards than those reared on other litter materials(Malone et al., 1983).

The reduction in antibody titer against Newcastle andInfluenza in broiler reared on rice hulls may be related toconsumption of pathogenic bacteria due to litter con-sumption in birds reared on rice hulls. Billgilli et al. (1999a)and Macklin et al. (2005) reported coliforms, aerobic,anaerobic and enteric bacterial counts were low in sand.Sand, being inorganic, contains few nutrients that could beutilized by bacteria and, thus, would tend to lead to lowerbacterial numbers. Rice hulls, being organic, would containnutrients that could be utilized by some bacterial species.Additionally, sand may lack binding sites for bacteria.Malone et al. (1983) indicated young chicks may consumelitter material, particularly when its particles are of smallsize. No reports regarding antibody titer or immunity andbedding material could be found.

4.2. Experiment 2

In the present study changes in behaviors of broilerschicks by litter type was observed. In agreement with ourresults, many researchers reported, behaviors of broilerchicks affected by different bedding types (Arnould et al.,2004; Shields et al., 2004, 2005). In this study, locomo-tion behavior on sand and wood shavings decreasedwhereas sitting increased. There might be a perceptualdifference in the way sand and wood shavings appear tobroilers, in the way it feels on their feet and in theirplumage. Cleanliness, temperature at lower depth in thebedding, odor or some other characteristics of thebedding may be important for resting. Billgilli et al.(1999a) found that sand bedding in commercial houses iscleaner than other litters.

The decrease in forage behavior on the rice hulls,reflects the changing condition of the litter such asfriability (Shields et al., 2005). In the present experimentdrinking behavior increased on the paper roll. Littersometimes got into the waterers, and the wood shavings,rice hulls and sand became suspended in the water to agreater extent than the paper roll. The result was that thewater tended to stay cleaner on the paper roll side of thepen, which might be one reason that the birds walked tothis side to drink.

M. Toghyani et al. / Applied Animal Behaviour Science 122 (2010) 48–5252

Dustbathing was performed more on the sand side,which is in agreement with findings of Shields et al. (2004,2005), showing that broilers prefer sand to wood shavings,paper bedding, or rice hulls for dustbathing. Arnould et al.(2004) found that broilers are attracted to trays of sandplaced in their pens and use the sand preferentially fordustbathing and foraging. Laying hens also prefer todustbathe in sand rather than in wood shavings or straw(Sanotra et al., 1995).

In the present study broiler chicks preferred to spendabout half of their time in the sand in comparison withother materials. In agreement with our findings Shields etal. (2005) reported when given a choice, broiler chicksrested more on sand than wood shavings bedding.

5. Conclusion

The results of these experiments demonstrated thatbroilers reared on floor (no litter), sand and paper rollperform as well as those reared on wood shavings andwhen given a choice, broilers spent a greater proportion oftheir total time in sand and increasingly performed manyof their behaviors on sand.

Acknowledgment

This project was supported by the Islamic AzadUniversity of Khorasgan (project number 51755860409003).

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