Wageningen University, together with other partners, received funding for three projects that will investigate the effect of social interactions in pigs and hens with the view to improving the welfare of these animals kept in groups.
Social interactions have a large impact when animals are kept in groups. The social environment will have an even greater impact in the future because group sizes are increasing and treatments such as beak trimming will probably be banned. Breeding programmes and rearing conditions will have to be modified in order to limit the risk of certain forms of damaging behaviour and to promote pro-social behaviour.
The Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre (ABGC), together with the Adaptation Physiology Group and other partners, has received funding from the STW, the NWO-ALW and the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (Research programme 'Value of Animal Welfare') for three projects which will investigate the effect of social interactions in pigs and poultry.
Wageningen University and Research Centre is joining forces with partners to develop methods that will not only lead to an improvement in animal welfare, but will also be accepted by the various stakeholders including producers, consumers and animal welfare organisations.
The NWO-ALW and the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality have funded the projects 'Preventing feather pecking in laying hens: from principle to practice'. The aim of this project is to study whether early predictors of feather pecking can be identified and to investigate the effects of rearing environment on feather pecking in commercial rearing flocks. This project is being conducted in cooperation with the University of Groningen, Utrecht University, Wageningen UR Livestock Research in Lelystad and Ter Heerdt BV.
