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Lookup NU author(s): Elena Armstrong, Dr Jonathan Guy, Dr Timothy Boswell, Dr Tom SmuldersORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2022, The Author(s). It is still unclear which commercial housing system provides the best quality of life for laying hens. In addition, there are large individual differences in stress levels within a system. Hippocampal neurogenesis or plasticity may provide an integrated biomarker of the stressors experienced by an individual. We selected 12 adult hens each with good and poor body condition (based on body size, degree of feather cover and redness of the comb) from a multi-tier free range system containing H&N strain hens, and from an enriched cage system containing Hy-Line hens (n = 48 total). Immature neurons expressing doublecortin (DCX) were quantified in the hippocampus, contents of the caecal microbiome were sequenced, and expression of inflammatory cytokines was measured in the spleen. DCX+ cell densities did not differ between the housing systems. In both systems, poor condition hens had lower DCX+ cell densities, exhibited elevated splenic expression of interleukin-6 (IL6) mRNA, and had a higher relative caecal abundance of methanogenic archea Methanomethylophilaceae. The findings suggest poor body condition is an indicator that individual hens have experienced a comparatively greater degree of cumulative chronic stress, and that a survey of the proportion of hens with poor body conditions might be one way to evaluate the impact of housing systems on hen welfare.
Author(s): Armstrong EA, Richards-Rios P, Addison L, Sandilands V, Guy JH, Wigley P, Boswell T, Smulders TV
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Scientific Reports
Year: 2022
Volume: 12
Issue: 1
Online publication date: 15/09/2022
Acceptance date: 13/08/2022
Date deposited: 06/10/2022
ISSN (electronic): 2045-2322
Publisher: Springer Nature
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18504-1
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-18504-1
PubMed id: 36109559
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