Effects of different rearing pattern on health and behavior in broilers.

The trial was conducted to investigate the effects of rearing pattern on health and behavior of broilers. Four hundred and eighty 22-day-old healthy AA cocks with an average body weight of (367. 66 ±1.12) g were allocated into three treatments, which included floor-reared, net-reared, extensive-reared group, and four replicates in each treatment, forty broilers in each replicate. The results showed that, there were not significant differences in the times of drinking, foraging, preening and resting, the tonic immobility duration (TI), fluctuanting asymmetry (FA) of leg length and width and the combined fluctuanting asymmetry of leg length, leg width and wing length, and feather conditions score (FCS) among treatments (P0. 05). Compared to the other two treatments, the times of foraging, sand bathing and movement behavior in extensive-reared group increased significantly, and gait score (GS) decreased significantly (P0. 05). Compared to the netreared group, fluctuanting asymmetry (FA) of wings width in extensive-reared group increased significantly (P0. 05). It was concluded that the extensive-reared group improved the health status and enriched the natural behavior of broilers.