Research Note: Injurious pecking in fattening turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo f. dom.)—video analyses of triggering factors and behavioral sequences in small flocks of male turkeys

Abstract

Injurious pecking is one of the main welfare issues in fattening turkey husbandry. Birds pecked by conspecifics can suffer from serious injuries that may even lead to the death of the victimized animals or require their culling. In the present study, the behavior of male turkeys was documented day and night using video recordings throughout the entire fattening period of 19 wk. Thus, when a turkey was found injured or dead in the barn, a retrospective analysis of video recordings was carried out to clarify the circumstances surrounding the death or injuries of the bird in the present study. In 3 fattening trials with a total of 1,620 male turkeys with intact beaks, 41 birds (2.5%) were found either seriously injured (n = 24) or dead (n = 17) in the barn as a result from conspecific pecking. The detailed evaluation of the video recordings showed that the onset of injurious pecking was mainly in the afternoon after the last daily visual controls of animals and that one third of the dead found animals died a natural death without any pecking incidents. The duration of injurious pecking directed against a certain conspecific was on average 794 min, ranging from 84 min to 1,437 min, that is up to almost an entire day. Pecking activities lasting more than 10 h were interrupted from the light regime between dusk and dawn but continued with the onset of light in the morning. Duration of injurious pecking events decreased with age ( P = 0.031). If the victims laid down or were impaired in their mobility, they would be surrounded by up to 10 turkeys that would still be forcefully pecking at the occipital and neck area of the badly injured or moribund birds.

The Prevalence of Integument Injuries and Associated Risk Factors Among Canadian Turkeys

“…It is possible that having the same person inspect the turkey flock allows birds to become familiar with that stockperson, and thus be less likely to be distressed during inspections. Injurious pecking has been observed to be initiated after a "general arousal" in a turkey flock without any other noticeable cause (5).…”

“…While this is a small increase in likelihood, it is important to note that aggressive pecking can appear quite early in life for toms (20-30 days), so the cumulative effect over the production period of the bird may be substantial (6,44). In wild turkey populations, aggressive pecking to form stable hierarchies does not result in serious injuries because there is sufficient space for birds to avoid each other (5). In the case of domestic turkey flocks, there is less opportunity to effectively escape aggressors, and individual identification is more difficult, which can prevent the formation of a stable hierarchy, leading to continued aggressive interactions (5).…”

“…In wild turkey populations, aggressive pecking to form stable hierarchies does not result in serious injuries because there is sufficient space for birds to avoid each other (5). In the case of domestic turkey flocks, there is less opportunity to effectively escape aggressors, and individual identification is more difficult, which can prevent the formation of a stable hierarchy, leading to continued aggressive interactions (5). Martrenchar et al (51) found that aggressive pecking increased between 5 and 10 weeks of age for both toms and hens, although the increase was more substantial in toms.…”

“…First described by Savory (3), injurious pecking can be broken down into three main types of pecking: aggressive pecking, tissue pecking (or cannibalistic pecking), and severe feather pecking. Aggressive pecking targets the head, neck, and snood areas in turkeys (3)(4)(5) and tends to be related to establishing/maintaining social hierarchy (6,7), although it can escalate into violence with no apparent function (5). Severe feather pecking is suggested to be a redirected foraging behavior, possibly from frustration due to a lack of environmental enrichment ["ethological view": (1,7) or, alternatively, a result of changes in brain structure similar to neuropsychiatric disorders ["dysfunctional view": (1,8)].…”

Learn to Train: Improving Training Data for a Neural Network to Detect Pecking Injuries in Turkeys

“…However, they could not provide an answer to the question of whether the onset of cannibalism/injurious pecking could be detected by changes in object-pecking frequencies or not. Bartels et al [ 24 ] documented the behavior of male turkeys and the circumstances surrounding pecking injuries. They concluded that injurious pecking events in male turkeys resulted from agonistic interactions in the context of ranking fights, and even seriously injured animals were continuously maltreated by larger groups of ten birds.…”