The welfare of millions of broiler chickens could be improved thanks to an educational video to help farmers identify and encourage positive welfare in broilers.
The video has been created following collaborative work by The Co-op, its chicken supplier, Two Sisters Food Group, and research partners the University of Bristol and FAI Farms.
The training video captures on-farm footage of broilers performing positive behaviours and describes why these behaviours are important for bird welfare. It then goes on to highlight the importance of litter, describing why maintaining dry and friable litter is not only good for the health of the birds, but also acts as another source of environmental enrichment for birds to interact with and perform positive behaviours.
The training video also describes how to observe birds, encouraging farmers to take time out of their day to simply watch the birds as this is the best way to understand the behaviours of the birds and can help farmers to quickly spot when something is not be quite right.
Dr Siobhan Mullan, senior research fellow in animal welfare at the Bristol Vet School, said: “We have worked with industry partners to produce and evaluate the effectiveness of this evidence-based training video. We are delighted that it will be made widely available through UK training courses and hope that, in combination with other initiatives, it will help to deliver real improvements to bird welfare.”
