Expression of oral stereotypies directed at the drinker (drinking) and empty feeder (pecking), by young, caged, restricted-fed broiler breeder fowls, was investigated in three experiments in which either the frequency of feeding or meal size was varied. Behaviour was measured from regular 15-min videorecordings. In Experiment 1, birds were provided with either one (lA), two (IB) or four (IC) hourly meals of 5 g in the morning, and a single balance meal in the afternoon. Treatment IC caused increases in drinking and pecking, compared with lA and IB, but effects of meal number and the total weight of food eaten during testing were indistinguishable.In Experiment 2, birds were provided with four meals of equal size in the morning, at either 1.5, 1 or 0.5 hr intervals, with a balance meal in the afternoon in the first week only. There was no difference among these treatments in drinking or pecking at any time, and neither stereotypy responded to variation in inter-feeding interval length in the ways predicted by two alternative theoretical models, constructed for adjunctive behaviours. Additional information from Experiment 1, and a comparison between Experiments 1 and 2, indicated that both stereotypies were correlated positively with meal size and/or the total amount eaten during testing. In Experiment 3, birds were provided with two meals (only) of unequal size at 09.00 and 12.00 h, and were conditioned to receiving either the large meal (32 g) first, the small meal (8 g) first, or large and small meals in random order. The main finding was that pecking declined from the first to the third hour after the small meal only when the small meal came first, and did not do so after the large meal. This suggests that the rate at which stereotyped pecking declines after eating may depend on the amount that is eaten.
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