Includes structural, behavioral, food, and auditory enrichment.
Feather pecking (FP) in laying hens is an important animal welfare problem in practice, despite extensive research and increasing sources of advice for farmers. We aimed to give an overview over results from experimental and...
Perching is a highly-motivated natural behavior of laying hens that has been considered as one of the essential welfare requirements. The objective of the study was to evaluate perching behaviors of laying hens as affected...
Provision of perches in enriched colony or cage-free hen housing facilitates birds’ ability to express natural behaviors, thus enhancing animal welfare. Although considerable research has been conducted on poultry perches, further investigation is needed of...
The nest surfaces preferred by hens are inconsistent with those typically provided in commercial settings. However, little research has explored hens’ preferences for commercially available nest surfaces. Our objective was to compare hens’ preferences for...
Egg location can be used to determine the nests that hens prefer, but it does not indicate whether the design of that nest satisfies a hen’s nesting motivation. Hens that are satisfied with the nest...
There are few studies investigating captive conditions for commonly kept public aquaria species. Here the thornback ray (Raja clavata) was used to determine preferred captive conditions via choice tests and behavioural observations. Substrate type, substrate...
Keeping animals in captivity should always favour conditions that aim to improve their welfare with respect to species-specific requirements. For laboratory animals, the majority of welfare issues have been explored in rodents thus far, whereas...
The objective of the study was to investigate if environmental enrichment and the composition of the social group would affect the behavior and relative brain weight of growing rabbits. Rabbits (72 males and 72 females)...
Environmental enrichment is used to enhance the well-being of captive animals and to prevent or reduce stereotypic and other abnormal behaviours. However, environmental enrichment does not always succeed in its intended purpose. We investigated whether...
Staggering food availability through a delivery device is a common way of providing behavioural enrichment as it is usually thought to increase the amount of natural behaviour due to the unpredictability of the food source...