Perch use in 11-wk-old turkey hens: impact on performance, health, and behavior
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Commercial turkeys are traditionally reared in floor barns, however, like most poultry species, turkeys display a natural desire to perch when given the opportunity. Perch use has typically been evaluated in laying hens, however due to size, weight, and postural differences, turkeys may have different preferences in perch design. The objectives were to examine perching preferences of turkey hens reared to 11 wk, as well as to examine the impact of perch use on hen health and performance. Nicholas Select (n=620) 11-d old turkey hens were randomly allocated to 20 pens (4 pen replicates/treatment) and assigned 1 of 5 perch design treatments (no perch (NP), 5 cm round dowel (5Rnd), 5 × 5 cm (5Sq), 10 × 5 cm (10Rec), or 15 × 5 cm (15Rec)). Data were analyzed via ANOVA as a complete randomized design, with significance declared when P≤0.05. Perch design did not affect hen performance or keel bone deviations and no fractures were found. Perching treatment had no effect on gait or footpad score at wk 7. At wk 11 gait scores were poorer in NP hens compared with 5Rnd (P=0.04) and footpad scores were poorer in NP hens compared with 15Rec (P=0.02). There were more turkey hens on the perch, as perch width increased at both 9 and 11 wk of age, demonstrating a preference for wider and flat perches. The results of this study demonstrate that turkeys will utilize perches when given the opportunity, with no detrimental effects seen on performance or bird health.
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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 | 0.000 | 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".