Can't we all get along!!!?
Sometimes I wonder why we do the things we do... That's a song...! The Temptations recorded this in 1967. Anyway, why do we need a less-aggressive hen? Is this really a problem? Here is the article...
"A team of scientists led by Agricultural Research Service biologist Heng-wei Cheng at the agency’s Livestock Behavior Research Unit in West Lafayette, Indiana, and William M. Muir of Purdue University, also at West Lafayette, has developed a line of laying hens that display far less aggression than their commercial counterparts, while maintaining industry-standard egg production. As a result of this development, the researchers were able to cut mortality losses among the birds without the usual beak-trimming.
At 58 weeks of age, the selected line of hens had significantly lower annual mortality than another group of hens – called a “control group” – and a commercial line of laying hens. When housed in communal cages, the kinder, gentler line had a 20 percent mortality rate, compared to 54 percent for the control line and 89 percent for the commercial line. Egg production was increased in the gentler birds, compared to the control line and the commercial line under the same conditions.
Most breeding programs in the past 50 years have concentrated only on traits related to production. For instance, through more than 20 years of breeding selection, egg production has increased significantly in one commercial line of laying hens, while mortality due to aggression and cannibalism among the birds with untrimmed beaks has also increased about 10-fold.
Cheng and his colleagues selected breeding birds based not just on production traits, but also took into account competitive interactions among the birds in a grogroup, or communal, setting. This selection program turns “survival of the fittest” – which emphasizes the individual – into “survival of the adequate,” which emphasizes the group.
Cheng is conducting further research to look at physiological alterations that explain the less aggressive behavior in the new line of hens. His preliminary work indicates this may be due to a decrease in dopamine levels in the birds. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that has been associated with dysfunctional behavior, as well as with a decline in the ability to cope with stress.
So, here is my question - why now? Why not years ago during the summer of love? We could have sent these chickens to Woodstock and they could have kicked back and dropped out of life and laid eggs for all the people there. Food would have been plentiful and the Abe and Abby Free's who attended would have been well fed and had peace-loving chickens all around them. Good grief - people... altering a chicken to be more "amenable", "kind", "non-aggressive" is ludicrous. If they are so aggressive maybe we should have been sending these chickens over the wall and have them peck the Russians to death used them Iraq or Afghanistan to root out Osama. 
Dopamine!? I think these two gentleman need to direct their energy elsewhere, it is obvious one, or both got pecked as a child and made it their life long mission to alter every chicken on the planet. If they are going to work on a bird or other to alter the aggressive traits they need to look at Pitbulls, not chickens.
I crown the new breed - "Woodstock"
No comments:
Post a Comment