Stocking density within chick transport boxes: effects on leghorn chick stress and box microclimate
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recommendations for the optimal stocking density (SD) of chicks within transport boxes have not previously been published, with current recommendations lacking scientific support. As a result of concerns from welfare organizations regarding high SD in delivery boxes, a field trial was conducted at a commercial hatchery to understand SD effects on chick stress and box microclimate. Lohmann LSL-Lite chicks (n = 3,630) were placed in plastic transport boxes (58 × 46 cm) for a 7-h simulated transport period (uncontrolled humidity; 27°C). The SD treatments (trt) used were 80, 100, or 120 chicks/box (33.4, 26.7, or 22.2 cm2/chick). Group body weight (BW); vent temperature; concentrations of corticosterone, electrolytes, and glucose; and yolk sac weights were measured pre- and post-trt. Temperature and relative humidity (RH) were recorded every 5 min in the boxes. Thermal images of the boxes were taken every h for box floor and chick surface temperature and to calculate spatial area used per chick. Body weight, vent temperature, yolk sac weights, and corticosterone concentration did not differ between SD trt post-trt. Box temperature and RH increased with increasing SD. Thermal images showed the minimum temperature was lowest, and temperature variability was greatest, in the 80 trt compared to the 100 and 120 trts. The spatial area used per chick differed between trt and chicks occupied less than the total spatial area available in all trt. In conclusion, within the conditions used in this study, altering SD did not affect bird wellbeing, but reducing the density increased temperature variability within the boxes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".